A number of readers have pointed out the article on Huffington Post: I Just Wish He Would Have An Affair! Click the link for the full post, but in a nutshell it describes the surprisingly common phenomenon of wives expressing the wish that their husbands would cheat on them, and asks why this is so common. The article opens with:

“My husband is so nice. He’s a good guy. I just wish he would have an affair!”

I have heard these comments, or comments very similar to this, numerous times lately. What’s going on? I’m not sure I have an answer. In fact, I know I don’t have an answer…

Further down she elaborates:

These women are done. They say they aren’t happy. They say they aren’t in love with their husbands (or any other man — they aren’t having affairs). They say they simply wish they were no longer married to him. They aren’t fulfilled. They wonder if this is how they are doomed to live the rest of their lives (and God-willing, most of them have another 40+ years ahead of them).

The common factor amongst all of these women is that they say that their husbands are really solid, good, nice men. They are not victims of physical or emotional abuse. They are not married to felons. They are not married to alcoholics or drug addicts. Their husbands are not having affairs. In fact, they tell me, there really isn’t anything “wrong” with their husbands … they just don’t want to be married to them anymore because they have fallen out of love.

While the author is baffled by the fact that so many of these women wish their husbands would have an affair, the reason is quite obvious if you consider the situation from the would be frivolous divorcées perspective. Divorce is an act of immense destruction. This is true even in cases where it is fully justified. Families aren’t designed to be broken apart. It takes an act of terrible destructive power to make this happen. You can’t just unfasten a few bolts and neatly remove one part from another. The only method available is something akin to remodeling with dynamite.

Put yourself in these women’s shoes for a moment. Imagine you have a mortgage you don’t want to have to pay any more. Never-mind the fact that you were the one hell bent on buying instead of renting, and never-mind that you very likely signed these mortgage papers in front of everyone you know; you aren’t haaaapy paying the mortgage any more. However, as your friends and the media tell you 24×7, you are in luck. Due to an inexplicable bout of legal insanity, there is a way out of your heavy obligation, a loophole. All you have to do is light the house on fire:

Don’t worry, your kids are statistically extremely likely to make it out alive without (visible) lifelong burns and pain. Yes, you will unfortunately put them and the rest of the family through unconscionable suffering, but the law is designed to move as much of the consequences as is possible to your soon to be ex husband and your children. But there is either way a terrible cost to doing what you want to do. It is a grave act of destruction. No one can deny this, even the pathological deniers:

…I know that in my case it took over two years before I stopped cringing about what I had done – institute a divorce.

So while you won’t be held legally responsible for the destruction you are about to unleash, you need to find a way not to be held morally responsible. You have to answer the question:

How could you profit from inflicting this kind of pain and destruction on the innocent, on your own family? How could you profit from breaking your own solemn word? What kind of a monster would do that?

This is where the near absolute corruption of modern Christianity comes into play. Even if you aren’t particularly religious, Christianity is the most prominent moral voice in the west. If you can get moral cover from Christianity this is your best shelter for what you want to do. Fortunately as I’ve shown repeatedly the corruption of modern Christianity is nearly perfect. A faithful Christian on the topic of marriage and divorce stands out as much as an honest cop in Ciudad Juarez.

But even here you have to work with them. It isn’t that Christians aren’t willing to gin up a biblical excuse for what you are about to do, but you need to provide them with a kernel to build their biblical rationalization on. They don’t need your husband to actually commit adultery, just tell them that he viewed pornography. They don’t need him to actually abuse you, just make an earnest enough pronouncement that he did. It can be as simple as declaring I will say, I was extremely emotionally abused. But as I said, you have to give them something however small that they can manufacture into a serious biblical charge. And don’t worry, it isn’t just Protestants who will do this for you, as Elusive Wapiti describes in his post Second Chances on the Divorce Superhighway:

My former wife had already absconded with my children across the country when she served me with divorce papers, thus her act of filing for divorce was both the beginning and the end of the divorce process. It was all over but for the court date to make it official…

Incidentally, her Catholic priest recommended to her that she seek a divorce (and later the Archdiocese of Washington would breezily approve the annulment, after having the sac to ask me for a $500 “donation” to finance their declaring that my marriage to her never happened and my children were henceforth bastards).

But what if part of you knows that your husband is truly a good man, who doesn’t deserve to be slandered while also (along with your children) bearing the bulk of the cost of the destruction you want to unleash? This can create a sense of guilt, as the Huffington Post article explains:

And we are talking about women here, so here comes the “guilt.” Women have guilt covered — and these women are no different. They feel guilty as all get out and wonder about what everyone else will think should they decide to leave this “nice” guy. They wonder about the impact it will have on their kids, their extended families, their circle of friends. Deep inside they feel selfish and ask, “What gives me the right to leave my husband when he has done nothing wrong?”

Yes, you read that right. Women are victims for feeling guilty about wreaking massive devastation on the innocent, for profiting from their own family’s pain and her own unwillingness to keep her promise. What they need is a patsy, a rube. They need someone else to volunteer to take the fall for the terrible crime they plan on committing. There is only one choice; their husband must be the one to play the patsy.

I lit it on fire because my husband looked at boobies on the web.

And remember, Christians are going to want her to claim some form of abuse or adultery. This leaves her with two options, somehow convince him to cheat (or at least view porn), or to abuse her. As with the wife in Fireproof, many women find that by denying their husband sex they can at least drive him to viewing porn. But as wretched as frivolous divorcées are, for some of them at least this charade is too much to stomach. They can’t imagine explaining for the rest of their lives that they turned their home into a smoking hole in the ground because their husband looked at porn. The same goes for trying to claim some nebulous form of abuse. So unless they can bait their husband into hitting them or filing for divorce himself, they need to get him to cheat.

This is why the Huffington Post author keeps hearing from women who wish their husbands would cheat, and why we have heard this same thing from so many other sources. You may recall the frivolous divorcée from the Marie Clairearticle I quoted in this post:

Clark had dated a handsome businessman for four years before they got engaged, and although he didn’t make her heart race, she still loved him. “We were best friends, and I thought he’d make a great husband and father, even though I wasn’t ‘in love,’” she says. “I walked down the aisle thinking, What the hell? During my vows, I wasn’t making eye contact with my fiancé.”

Five years and two kids later, their sex life nonexistent, Clark wanted out. “I’d often wish he would cheat,” she says.

The women sometimes responded with a kind of countermanipulation: “they thought if they were cold and treated their husbands terribly, the men would leave, or ask them to leave.” Sometimes this happens—which, inci­dentally, explains why divorce initiation statistics can be misleading. A sig­nificant portion of the roughly thirty percent of divorces which are formally male-initiated result from the wife deliberately maneuvering her husband into taking the step.

But it is not always easy for women to obtain a divorce in this manner: “Some of the women couldn’t believe the things their husbands were willing to put up with.” (So much for men not being committed.) The author recounts cases where women deliberately tried to provoke their husbands into striking them because they calculated it would be to their advantage in the looming child-custody dispute.

When I told a friend of mine that her h was cheating on her, while she was devastated, she was also thankful and relieved. In her words, “What you told me saved me from having to stay in a loveless marriage.”

I often wished that I could have been the one who was left by my husband. Of course, I acknowledge that being left isn’t any more fun, but I longed to be able to avoid taking responsibility for the choice that made me feel so unhinged.

There are two key things we should all take away from this. The first is that a divorcée with a seeming good excuse very well may not be as innocent as she sounds. The profoundly biased family courts and the thorough corruption of modern Christianity create a huge incentive for wives to willfully maneuver their husbands into playing the patsy. He may have hit her, he may have even cheated on her, but that doesn’t mean she was an innocent victim or is a good bet for (re)marriage. Some number of women are certainly blameless, but unfortunately we typically can’t tell. This is made all the worse by the bizarre willingness, often eagerness, of the blameless to stand in solidarity with the frivolous.

The other thing men especially must take away from this is to be aware of the risk. As Devlin describes, “I’m not haaaapy!” isn’t just an innocent expression of marital dissatisfaction. It is typically an indication that you are already well down the path of marital destruction. Men need to be aware of this to protect themselves from false charges, and they need to be smart, restrained, and moral enough not to actually play the patsy. No matter how much she communicates through her attitude and her actions that she wants you to hit her or cheat on her, don’t take the bait.

543 Responses to Why so many wives wish their husbands would cheat.

This article describes my mother in a nutshell. She went one step further, trying to emotionally and mentally destroy my older brother and I to get at him. We bear the scars to this day.
Guess what? I’m not married.

Dalrock, this might be your best post. It describes what happens. And then the churchians and female family court judges will never refute a woman’s excuse to avoid guilt. They placate since it is so easy to pile on the patsy.

There is more concern and love for children shown in the manopshere than in the majority of churches. The family courts have NO concern for children and exist to serve, to soothe and excuse women, while extracting money and promoting the destruction of society.

If men are so selfish, why do the majority of men in the manopshere oppose abortion?

This is proof alone that feminists (including Christo-feminists) are selfish and do not REALLY care about life (or born children). It is sheer hypocrisy to embrace divorce while feigning opposition to abortion. It is revealed that common men (even more than churches) are the defenders of life.

You read this sort of thing and shake your head. I simply cannot fathom why American men agree to get married. Ever. It’s like playing Russian roulette with 5 loaded chambers. It’s been almost two generations of full bore feminism now. How long do you need to get the simple notion of “no”?

Very few are totally blameless. Those who chose the worst sorts of husbands or wives chose them and need to ask themselves why, or what attracted each to the other. Often we are attracted to those whose brokenness matches our own, which results in a feeling of connection but it is spiritually negative and cannot hold over the long term. Or women will “settle” for something bland thinking it’s safe, hence the “He’s such a great guy; I wish he would cheat!” thing.

More often than not it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other. Trying to escape blame or taking any responsibility only prevents growth and correction. It’s a painful process but a necessary one, if for nothing else than to ameliorate some of the damage done to the children.

True story: a female friend of mine – married for a dozen years, three kids, nice suburban everything – up and dumped her beta hubby, with whom there was nothing wrong except he was, well, boring. She was – you know this is coming – not haaaaappy … and she’s a highly educated Evangelical of a rather devout kind. Did any of that “belief” matter? Of course not, she wasn’t haaaaappy. Even though she is politically and socially conservative she set up a date with a major-league playa (another friend of mine, I know this one from all sides) who, in one night, gave her all the orgasms hubby ever had and BANG! so much for that marriage.

She ditched hubby, ruined their lives, etc. And you know why karma is, in fact, a bitch? Because she, of course, imagined that Alpha Stud would take up with her and her demon spawn. Think that happened? Nope! She got added to his harem, lower rung, and gets fucked when he has extra time. He is such an expert playa that she sets up ‘dates’ for him with other (younger, hotter) women! Dude is a master.

Hubby? Not so much sex for him now …. though I doubt she worries much about that.

Given your history, you have a vested interest in offloading guilt. It is your power! Do you really want the men here to go and read the sections on your blog titled “My Story” and “The Affair”? You have guilt over your husband’s affair, so you assume a persona of “sexy Christian wife”, but it’s a mask and with it you give yourself permission to check out of your marriage and abdicate responsibility with “if he does it again, I’ll divorce him, because Jesus said it’s OK.”

To wit:

I told him I wanted him to go to counseling with me, and that helped us immensely. It cemented into my brain that THIS IS NOT MY FAULT. I had to say that over and over to myself. THIS IS NOT MY FAULT, THIS IS NOT MY FAULT, THIS IS NOT MY FAULT……There is something wrong with him that he would try to solve his problems in this terribly destructive way, he needs to fix that, there is nothing I can do to fix it or to stop it from happening again, it is all up to him to fix it.

Eventually I felt that God gave me an answer. I don’t know how to explain how God talks to me, he just does and I know he does and I know it is Him. He loves me, He is my rock, and He is the only thing I can depend on when life throws me storms. I don’t know how people survive without Him. God told me that I could do what I wanted this time, I could leave my husband or stay with him. God told me He would take care of me if I left my husband, He would take care of my children and we would be okay. I just had to decide what to do. (this was different from the first affair, God told me to stay with my husband then.) So I carefully thought about what I really wanted to do. Did I want to stay with this man who said he loved me but kept hurting me so badly or did I want to escape the pain and try it on my own and protect myself so that this would never happen again. It wasn’t really about trying to find someone new, it was more about not getting hurt again. Finding a happiness apart from my husband where he couldn’t destroy me again. After thinking really hard about it, I pictured a time in our distant future when we were all together and he loved me and he loved our kids. I wanted him to love me, I wanted to be with him because I loved him. I knew that the best future for our kids was with him and not another man, but I had to know that that was the best future for me too. So that is chose. I chose us. I know that this could happen again, and I don’t think we will survive it if it does, but for now I am being a fool for us. Logically, that doesn’t make any sense, but this is something that is worth being an idiot over, so I’m going to do that and keep trying and hoping that it will work. God will be with me if it happens again and He will take care of me then. God will be with me if my husband leaves me for another woman. I don’t have much faith in my husband right now, I’m not depending on him, I don’t feel loved by him, and I definitely don’t trust him. [my emphasis]

The first woman to comment is married to a man that had a two affairs (with ONE woman) and, typically of women, she wants validation to keep her winning lottery ticket, so she can claim prizes whenever God tells her to cash it in.

“she wants validation to keep her winning lottery ticket, so she can claim prizes whenever God tells her to cash it in.”

In the Catholic religion (traditionally), divorce because of adultery (with no chance of remarriage, of course) was permitted, the putting away of an adulterous wife was permitted, however, if a husband (or wife) forgave and took back his (her) spouse, the “putting away” was no longer permitted.

Thank God all women aren’t so needy, and I think few women who are truly abused drove their husbands to it (among other things, normal and smart men don’t want to hit their wives, for both moral and legal reasons, not to mention the logic of “I might knock my wife out”). But this society indeed shows what happens when people are made to think they’re helpless, without fault, and always entitled, plus absent from shame, faith, and discipline. Dalrock, that article by Michelle Langley was upsetting and fascinating. Sometimes I wonder if the frusteration and unstable behavior from certain women is not just because of lack of meaningful life, but the perpetual frusteration with being told you’re just a victim.

Apparently talking of love is leading many people the wrong way. It might be better to emphasize the logic/vow of non-violence/non-hurting. Love offers the “I’m not happy” get out for free card, but it is much harder to hamster out of a vow not to hurt the other person.

Dalrock since you let us know you would be busy for a month, in Programming note, and could not post much, you have posted 9 articles in 12 days. It is much appreciated.

Is there a contact for your boss we can have? We need to tell him to keep dumping work on you.

It is funny how that works. I almost mentioned that this might happen in the programming note post. At the time I thought feeling freed up to make lighter shorter posts might make me more prolific. That happened some as well, but then Empath suckered me into that post on Christian women not feeling the love (which lead to my writing the post on denial) and the SPLC volunteered. With this post I did everything I could to avoid writing it. I tried not to write it for days, but when I woke up this morning I knew I had to get it written out. It is in fact a great relief to have written and published it.

I think “divorce” is the wrong word in this case. To “put away” a wife does not include the modern understanding of divorce, which is the termination of the marital contract between a validly married man and woman. The Catholic Church has consistently held that a valid sacramental marriage cannot be dissolved. Perhaps “permanent separation” would be a better term? (Semantics, I know, but an important distinction.)

This also goes to something I wanted to clarify with Dalrock–that although individual authorities in the Catholic Church may in some cases have abused the Church’s provision for annullments (which are different from divorces!–the latter is a declaration that a marriage is over, the former that it never took place), the Catholic Church’s doctrine has been consistent from the day of Her founding–something one cannot say about the Protestant sects. It is one thing to misinterpret or mis-apply a valid teaching; it is another to discard the entire teaching to accommodate modern secular trends (as Protestants have done).

[D: Ah, well if it wasn’t a fire, but instead a conflagration that makes it all better. I’ll ring up Elusive Wapiti with the good news. He and his kids didn’t really go through the hell of divorce sanctioned by the Catholic Church. Well he did, but when they sanctioned it they called it something else, so at least he has that.

Face it, the Church is corrupt. If not, EW would have recourse against this presumed rogue bishop.]

Lavazza, if you only knew the power of the rationalization hamster! Since these women aren’t happy, they are hurting their spouses every day. The only way to end the hurt is to get a divorce! It’s over and done then, you see.
/hamster

I know it’s very hard for most males to believe (particularly those of a certain age), but a tremendous change has taken place recently which has completely reversed the gender roles. Women are uniformly *not* interested in marriage or relationships right now. By contrast, men *are* very much interested.

The quoted article is merely one example of many. If you haven’t been in the dating market recently, you wouldn’t know this. I have a blog where I track dating trends and I regularly point out that women have stopped giving eye contact or flirting in “mating venues” i.e. bars/clubs (which they were doing as recently as 5 years ago), and that our social vibe has changed 180 degrees from “Sex And The City” and “He’s Just Not That Into You” (remember that book, by the way? Seems like ancient history now, way back when women were trying to get men to commit).

I don’t think it’s very constructive to express surpise, outrage, or disbelief. It would be much more useful to take a dispassionate look at why the roles have reversed and what’s driving the change. Women are just as rational and selfish as men, and they’ll use whatever situation they’re in to their advantage. Something is going on in society, and it’s best to accept what is and try to understand the issues better from women’s point of view.

[D: I’m not arguing that women should commit (unless they will be having children), I’m arguing that they need to keep the commitments they make. Did you just read a post on someone else’ blog and accidentally reply on this one?]

So are you going to make more empty platitudes or are you going to say what is “causing” your perceived shift?

[D: More importantly, who cares? She desperately wants to change the subject. Who cares if she thinks women don’t want to marry? I’m certainly not going to talk unserious women into marriage. I’ll try to talk them out of having children, but not into “relationships” or marriage. If we tell her we are happy for her, will she then go away?]

Isn’t it time to give up. Christian marraige is a footnote in history. A perfect storm of circumstances was needed to enable it. Those are gone.

The problem is twofold. As I showed it isn’t just Christian marriage that Christian corruption is destroying. As the primary moral voice in the West, corrupt Christians are destroying marriage as an institution, full stop. The other problem is that marriage is fundamental to raising children. There is no way around this.

Well in the spirit of good faith I looked at the blog of commentator rfactor. Seems as though the crux if this persons argument is that because nightclubs in major us cities have bottle service, women give fewer ioi. I can’t argue since I neither pick up at clubs, nor live in a large american metropolis.

The rest of the posts is largely boilerplate about how women aren’t interested in marriage and children since 2007.I will simply close by saying I would have a hard time believing this individual is even 25 yet as he is simply reinventing the wheel.

Sexy Christian Wife says:
I don’t think I would go as far as to say it is a common phenomenon among women.
That is somebody that has been A. hiding under a rock. B. Playing dumb .
Dalrock you are going to have to be a 2 semester requirement for a degree in theology.

And the women wonder why their husbands would rather endure their selfish nonsense than go through divorce hell…sometimes I think game is too generous by far for these broads. Yet the Hymowitzes and Bennetts of the world wonder why fewer and fewer of us are stepping up to the buzzsaw…er, alter in this demented age we live in…

Since civil divorce (and child support orders) are likely to occur in cases of a catholic marriage broken by adultery, I thought the word divorce was suitable, but did not intend to suggest that Catholics accept the dissolution of sacramental marriage.

As for Dalrock’s request for congregations that don’t accept frivolous divorce, you may want to look into the SSPX. They make those who marry in under their auspices sign an oath not to seek a diocesan declaration of nullity without having submitted to the judgment of their own process. They also advise those divorced not to seek diocesan annulments. However, they don’t disturb those who have diocesan annulments and are remarried. It would be interesting to me to learn what the divorce rate for SSPX marriages is.

Once a women obtains “a kernel to build [her] biblical rationalization on”, it is a repulsive concept for other women to not uphold the “kernel.” The man is solely responsible! (White Knights & manginas will rally to support the “victim.”)

To fail at maintaining the excuse (“kernel”) is to advocate destroying the lottery ticket and releasing the hold of a man’s balls and his produce.

What if it happened to her? SHIT! No woman wants to take any such responsibility! Team Woman is horrified at giving up the “kernel” of justification for a divorce. No need to look at both sides of the story once the “kernel” is found.

St. Thomas Aquinas on the frailty of women. (Frailty, they name is woman!)

(explanation: he lists the objection then refutes it)

“Objection 5.On the contrary, It would seem in this matter the wife ought to have the preference. For the more frail the sinner the more is his sin deserving of pardon. Now there is greater frailty in women than in men, for which reason Chrysostom [Hom. xl in the Opus Imperfectum falsely ascribed to St. John Chrysostom] says that “lust is a passion proper to women,” and the Philosopher says (Ethic. vii, 7) that “properly speaking women are not said to be continent on account of their being easily inclined to concupiscence,” for neither can dumb animals be continent, because they have nothing to stand in the way of their desires. Therefore women are rather to be spared in the punishment of divorce.

. . . .

“Reply to Objection 5. In adultery there is the same sinful character as in simple fornication, and something more which aggravates it, namely the lesion to marriage. Accordingly if we consider that which is common to adultery and fornication, the sin of the husband and that of the wife are compared the one to the other as that which exceeds to that which is exceeded, for in women the humors are more abundant, wherefore they are more inclined to be led by their concupiscences, whereas in man there is abundance of heat which excites concupiscence. Simply speaking, however, other things being equal, a man sins more grievously in simple fornication than a woman, because he has more of the good of reason, which prevails over all movements of bodily passions. But as regards the lesion to marriage which adultery adds to fornication and for which reason it is an occasion for divorce, the woman sins more grievously than the man, as appears from what we have said above. And since it is more grievous than simple fornication, it follows that, simply speaking, the adulterous wife sins more grievously than the adulterous husband, other things being equal.”

No, you were twisting hers. I’m trying very hard to be civil, but you certainly don’t make it easy on me considering the garbage you litter the internet with.

Save your breath, 7Man. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m impervious to your Team Woman nonsense and all of your other tired memes because I know for a fact that 99.99% of women think I’m a total misogynist.

I see a lot of shaming for every thought, feeling, and decision a woman makes (even when the outcome is objectively good) with little to no practical advice. Us at Traditional Christianity (aka “Team Woman”) believe in defining and upholding good principles and strengthening each other to subordinate their will to those higher principles, The goal is that maintaining principles eventually brings emotional satisfaction but even if it doesn’t that isn’t an excuse to defy good principles.

I don’t think you’re a misogynist, Alte, but I do see beyond the surface of these interactions and if you step back and look at the big picture, you seem to want to attack me although I have not attacked you. Is it an act of charity to help someone maintain their delusions?

Feel free to disagree, but I find these accusations curious. Team Woman versus opinions that might get you branded a misogynist are two different things and completely unrelated.

Team Woman is just meant to dismiss a conversation and avoid discussing the point.

7man- you know full well why she was offended by CL’s words towards SCW. It is because they were meant to cut deep. CL has a talent for saying mean things as most women in the ‘sphere can testify to. You may be doing it too but it is full of so much esoteric gobbledygook that it passes over most peoples heads anyway. It is like the difference between you shooting someone with a squirt gun and CL shooting them with a sniper rifle and then defending her cruelty by calling it charity.

I’d love to rush in and defend some man who has been attacked by you or CL with little provocation but you have yet to give me the opportunity.

“Secret shame” is not relevant to every topic. If a person is trying to discuss what X equals it doesn’t really matter what her underlying motivations are. Maybe she wants to know what x equals because of “secret shames” or perhaps she is just curious. Reveling in peoples past sins is grossly voyeuristic.

Well, 7 and CL, to be fair, you guys are playing pretty heavily for Team Lovebird and while it’s cute, it’s also annoying for the rest of us who have already staked our claims and have moved on to Team I Hate Everybody Except Occasionally The Person I’m Married To and His/Her Spawn. It’s hardly Team Woman, more like Team WHAT NOW!?!? It’s a daily battle, and assault on men (and de facto on family) is neither instigated nor tolerated only by women. There are plenty of men willing to eat their own.

I thought we were all supposed to be playing for Team Everyone Else is Fucked in the Head and Wrong Besides? I don’t see the benefit to subdivision, except that would be hard to put on a tshirt.

Because you say it all of the time, obviously. It’s like conversing with a broken record. Half of your memes are just corrupted versions of the things I’ve written myself. I feel like I have someone cribbing off of my sheet, but misspelling everything. It’s annoying.

Is it an act of charity to help someone maintain their delusions?

No, you’re right. It’s not. Would you like for me to help you shatter your own?

How about this, for one: staying in a difficult marriage is hard. Being submissive and faithful even when your husband is behaving immorally or irrationally is damned hard. You might want to try it sometime, so that you can speak from experience. You might want to consider that the next time you’re tempted to criticize a woman who’s managing to do something you didn’t.

You give out bad advice because of ignorance and because you’re trapped in your own bizarre submission fantasy. Real submission isn’t just about being turned on and maintaining frame, and all the other stuff you two obsess over, it’s about submitting to your God’s will. Sure, it’s easier if you think he’s hot and everything is going great, but you have to do it regardless.

Because Team Woman’s “good principles” are waaaay better than any dumb GUY’S principles.

No, God’s principles are better than man’s principles. God makes the law, not man. Are you really going to argue otherwise to a bunch of Christians?

But not staying faithful in the face of an immoral man might damage your female proclivity to be a martyr and make sure every damn person knows how morally superior you are. You bathe in your smug self-superiority and everyone is exhausted by you.

And that husband-falling-down thing? Been there. Done that. I did everything in my power to “fix” it. Funny thing – it fixed itself when I gave him control, and let him decide what he wanted. One thing is for sure, I didn’t convince myself that the promptings from my conscience were whispers from God. I allowed that my conscience might be poorly informed about all the consequences. If I’d believed it was God talking, I might have done something stupid.

Suz, as far as know, Alte doesn’t interpret the Bible, she just does what it says. She’s wonky and literal like that.

God gave you a brain. Use it.

Really, Sugar? He gave you a browser, too, you might want to use it as well.

it fixed itself when I gave him control, and let him decide what he wanted. One thing is for sure, I didn’t convince myself that the promptings from my conscience were whispers from God. I allowed that my conscience might be poorly informed about all the consequences. If I’d believed it was God talking, I might have done something stupid.

CSW came in after a long post on a deadly serious topic, and in one line simply said NAWALT. It was all she had to offer. Sorry fathers and children, suck up your trip through the meat grinder, because NAWALT. CL was kind and measured in her response under the circumstance. You may have some separate beef with CL, and I gather at least some of the women at Traditional Christianity have a separate beef with me given Terry/Elspeth’s angry email a while back defending Sheila Gregoire and concern that my posts might hurt Sheila’s revenue stream, as well as the fact that some time after that I was dropped from TC’s blogroll.

All of that being what it is, this is a serious issue. I’ll share some stats if anyone here has managed to miss them. Can we get back on topic?

But not staying faithful in the face of an immoral man might damage your female proclivity to be a martyr and make sure every damn person knows how morally superior you are. You bathe in your smug self-superiority and everyone is exhausted by you.

Ybm, that’s presuming a lot, don’t you think? I mean, if you’re exhausted I believe you, but how is a woman looking for insight into something, willing to go beyond stomping her foot and leaving when all the cultural cues point that way, the same as trying out for martyr of the year? Maybe she’s perfectly awful, but to assume she’s only in it for the whining? I don’t know. Lots of men stay when their wives cheat, for all kinds of reasons, children, or stability, whatever – I don’t think that makes him a martyr, necessarily, only kinder than his wife. I don’t see women who do the same as heroic, but I can only speak for myself I guess.

I’m trying to figure out here CL, what the heck your problem is with SCW. She did something that should be considered noble here. She pressed into her faith, swallowed her pride, and stayed with a husband who was unfaithful. Not only that, but she made and is making every possible attempt at rebuilding her marriage and being what her husband needs in a wife and finds attractive.

What exactly is your problem with her? Seriously? You need to check yourself. You are out of line.

Hahaha see the martyrdom in action! Watch as “traditional Christian” women fall back on that old faithful evangelical canard: “mine is a superior X” and watch as they fill in marriage, etiquette, form of promiscuity, gender role, and even sometimes, an invented Internet etiquette code!

Behold as all forms of debate are rendered useless as they cross their flabby arms and scowl sanctimoniously!

CL said: “Trying to escape blame or taking any responsibility only prevents growth and correction. It’s a painful process but a necessary one…”

That’s the bottom line. Women always like to start the story in the middle. Men do too, of course, but men are better at seeing the whole picture. For all our propensity for “analyzing,” we analyze minutiae, each little segment in isolation from the rest. We end up with a series disjointed short stories instead of concurrent chapters, and only half of the story – we leave out the parts that don’t seem to fit. The first time I read “Gone With the Wind,” I skimmed through the boring parts and read the romance. I think the “good parts” version is what most women use to make life-altering decisions.

A measured response would have been to explain the insensitivity of NACWALT. Trolling her journal for personal tidbits to cut and post in this thread for the purposes of shaming and mocking is a bit much.

TC and Dalorck seem to be in agreement that most women are willing to divorce if unhappy and will pull all kinds of dirty tricks to seem blameless and leave the relationship with “cash and prizes”. Dalrock seems to be coming from the perspective that the solution to this is to warn men of what to look for in these types of women and how to prevent being scammed by them. I don’t disagree with this it just isn’t my expertise. TC markets itself towards women, encouraging principled biblical living while also acknowledging the trials of marriage and the practical ways to overcome them. We seem to be frequently accused of not taking a hard-enough stance against women by the manosphere but accused of being too anti-woman by everyone else. I think our stance is geared toward effectively changing hearts and minds toward a traditionalists perspective towards family life.

CL brought on the derailment through her self-serving detraction. You didn’t call her out on it, and now you have the gall to call it a kindness. And then you sit by while people judge me without grounds, using accusations of some “secret shame” so opaque that I can’t even defend myself against them. This is typical morally mercenarial behavior from you, and that’s precisely why we dropped you from our blogroll.

I do a lot of things wrong, but I don’t then pretend that they’re right to save face or promote my own twisted theology.

God’s principles as interpreted by righteous woman.

God’s principles as interpreted by the Church, led by the Vicar of Christ. The same principles the rest of the Catholics here have taken a solemn vow to adhere to, much as they try to pretend otherwise. Morality isn’t relative and you don’t get to make it up as you go along. It’s all been written down and now it’s even been translated into the vernacular. Help yourself.

My husband has the right to expect me to obey his commands, as long as they are not immoral, but not to rewrite the Bible and expect me to honor his new version.

I also will not be back, so spare your snickering, Matthew. I’ve learned to avoid this place, and today I got another gratuitous reminder of why that is. You can have the last word, and the one after that, and the one after that. Gossip away, rant away, do as you please and as you’re wont to do. I don’t care, as I won’t be around to hear it.

CL, if Jesus says something is okay, then He’s right. Also, I don’t believe I am held responsible for my husband’s sin of an affair, yes I may have contributed to it, but ultimately it was his choice. My “mask” is by actually by my husband’s request, he would prefer it if the entire internet (and our children in the future) did not know about his affair. Also, divorcing a man after a 3rd affair would not be a free ticket. If I wanted a free ticket, this last one was my best chance because I’m still young enough to catch someone else, if I wait 5-10 more years for the next affair to get my “free ticket”, my odds of successfully marrying someone else are pretty low. So it is kind of idiotic for me to stay with him from a worldly perspective.. But I believe in miracles and hope and Christ, so who cares what the world says.

Greyghost, I have lots of girlfriends and I’ve never heard a single one of them say that they want their husband to have an affair so they can get a divorce. This woman in the article is obviously a nut, and you guys are blowing her all out of proportion and saying she is the norm.

Dalrock, I can’t figure out if you are a good guy or a bad guy. I go back and forth. The men in my life protect women, this is the natural way for a man to treat a woman. Are you men saying that since there are feminists in this world, that women no longer need the protection of their men? It really confuses me because you are a father and husband, so I know you have women in your life that you dearly love and would protect; so how is your cause helping them and not hurting them in the future?

Wow Dalrock this last one here really has the women going crazy. I think you being a man that knows marriage is right and good allows you to see what the hell has happened to christian faith and marriage in the west. I think I said this before For a guy that is pro marriage you sure have a knack for for showing reasons for MGTOW. And your training aids are supposidly the cream of the crop for moral and ethical quality women. Christian women. NAWALT WTF Dalrock these were supposed to be those women. Over the last few months you have shown over and over again that not only are these women like that,hell they are setting the agenda and have completely corrupted the church. Dalrock there are people on death row that will see the pearly gates before these good christian women. Based on what I ve seen over the last few months my son could marry a pornstar and it wouldn’t be a moral drop at all from a western “christian ” woman.
Do not marry, If you want a child go the surrogate route and push for gay marriage and adoption( maybe that will clear the way and normalize men adopting children) And last but not least send money to any body developing an artificial womb.
Unbeleivable Dalrock

Greyghost, I have lots of girlfriends and I’ve never heard a single one of them say that they want their husband to have an affair so they can get a divorce. This woman in the article is obviously a nut, and you guys are blowing her all out of proportion and saying she is the norm.

How telling is it that HuffPo has a “weddings” section and a “divorce” section, but no “marriage” section?
The only time they seem to be interested in sanctity of marriage is when that marriage is “right” with their god (i.e. between two people of the same gender).

Traditional Christian women are so full of shit, I’d take a radfem over a subhuman “traditional Christian” any day of the week. At least you know what you are getting, and they usually ave an extreme submissive hidden under layers of guilt.

No Christian man should ever allow himself to be degraded by giving commitment to a used up, banged out “traditional Christian” hypocrite

My wife is a Psychiatrist who has done alcohol and drug counseling at various points in her career. She absolutely hates working with female alcoholics / drug users because they are far more stubborn about admitting the truth. The first part of recovery is for the user to admit they have a problem but if you can never reach that point then everything else is just a waste of time. I once saw a television about Munchausen’s by Proxy which had a similar story. Most of the men who are caught (on video) end up admitting they harmed their children while the women almost never will. Even when confronted with irrefutable evidence they simply tell a bald face lie rather than confess. I am sure that there is some biology at work and that it is more than just the shame of being a bad mother.

On top of that, women tend to be much better liars than men. When lying, men will typically concoct a cover story, sometimes quite lame, whereas women tend to dissemble and dissimulate (think of Nancy Pelosi who smiles when she gets super pissed off). Many women will never say the truth even if you cross examine them like a hostile witness. This can be a real problem in a workplace setting where some female employees simply never answer with a yes or no preferring to cleverly withhold information as sort of power trip. In a marriage this can be worse. If an employee lies they get fired, but what do you do when your spouse repeatedly lies? Lying tends to be habit forming so eventually everything they say is discounted even if it is only to say hello.

What you consider escalation is interesting, I was responding to a comment, in which greyghost suggested homosexual marriage (of which anal sex, between men, is presumably a part) was a superior alternative to men marrying women. I wasn’t the one who brought up homosexual marriage, iirc. But I’m always wrong, so there’s that for you to fall back on.

When you’re done with a conversation, you express your discomfort and want everyone else to go ni-night, too, apparently. Right on cue.

Okay, what is with the junior high, clumping-at-lockers, dissing-each-other stuff going down here? You guys know that no matter how many sorting procedures we go through trying to figure out who is the coolest nerd group, we are all nerds, right? Who cares who passed whom a nasty note? Focus on the fact that the jocks are picking us off in the halls and the burnouts are in the parking lot rifling through our hatchbacks looking for hash money.

We’re all going to be catty sometimes, but let’s not make an art form of it. Dalrock’s not the problem. The women at TC are not the problem. Focus on the problem.

It is very funny reading traditional Christian tissue paper try to shame men, then try to protray themselves as somehow allies to men or “real women”. It only takes a few inflammatory remarks for these “reformed whores” to go right into their natural state, you know, that traditional wife stuff her poor beta-boy wimp of a husband has to endure? The one that ground him down into a wimpy little nub.

A Christian man, no, any man, must avoid Christian women at all costs. Christian women are great to get off with, but monogamy? Ha! Gamers like tfh and pmaft are correct, Christian women do have 1 traditional role, just remember to flush the toilet afterwards!

When you chicks get into a pissing match over here you should try to be more funny or something.

I just keep glazing over trying to read your inane, dry-ass comments. I do like to see the female participation, but over here the whole piss-n-moan, talk-in-circles approach is ineffective in the face of large doses of male truth. It is what we say it is, and what we KNOW it is, and we can smell your spin like stink on shit.

I actually think that most, if not all women want their husband to cheat, for various reasons:

1. In the case of feminist women, it provides them the moral superiority and high ground. “I hate men because heeeeeee cheaaaatttteeddd””
2. In the case of Christian hypocrite women, it provides them the moral and high ground ” you and your evil penis are in siiiiiiiinnnnn”

This is aside from the various things discussed by gamers such as dhv, alpha, and the harem effect.

I started paying attention to this blog after I failed with a traditional Christian girl, trying to date her “The Art of Manliness” style (that site is good for everything except dating/relationship IMO). Even after taking the Red Pill, I still harboured some hope that NAWALT and traditional Christian women are good bets. Ended up getting friendzoned after two months and shortly afterwards, she fucked a well-known player in our larger social circle who was at the time “on and off” with an ex-GF / FB (and also had a few other “GFs” in other states) – probably because “God” told her she should be with him.

At the time, I thought she was the worst Christian woman ever. Now, after reading Dalrock’s blog for a while, I no longer believe so. She was a spring chicken compared to her peers, as eloquently demonstrated here countless times!

Saint Velvet is doing the playing dumb act here boys and girls, and throwing in some gay shaming. Now that has been demonstrated here the only use a man has to marry is to get him a uterus to grow a child in. (he sure as hell isn’t getting a life partner) Even that as the only real reason to be with a women due to custody laws is now too much of a risk. The last avenue of possibly marrying safe, an ethical christian woman is and was a lie. My comment was a way for a man to be a father without the bagage of a worthless and legal liability of a women and Saint Velvet you knew that.

Typical: two known anti-feminist Christian women disagree with the loved males and their supporters hereabouts, and they get attacked for it. Wow Matthew, some “secret shame”; don’t you just know everything.

“The first woman to comment is married to a man that had a two affairs (with ONE woman) and, typically of women, she wants validation to keep her winning lottery ticket, so she can claim prizes whenever God tells her to cash it in”

My God. Even a woman being cheated on is just in it for the martyrdom, according to 7man. Seriously, 7man and CL: you’ve gotten way off course on Christianity. Even Svar noticed.

Anti-feminist woman is a contradiction. Political feminism is a “thing” one can be against. Feminism itself is merely the word for the system of female supremacy in the temporal and the spiritual. It is in a word, biological, to woman. much as the idea of the noble sacrifice, or chivalry if you will, is to man. In his nature state he will sacrifice himself like a moronic slave for whatever he can be convinced to do so for, the white ribbon campaign is a good example. In her natural state, the woman is a cruel tyrant seeking her own domination over all others to secure power, status, and resources. Feminism is merely the word given to that biological imperative.

Right TF, married women like Velvet, Alte and Elspeth come here to get off on the grunting, snorting, snickering and occasionally girlish glee that swines offer in their ripping down on women. Sure. They don’t give a damn about feminists, misogynists, liberals, or even me and my more egalitarian beliefs; they live by their own convictions and don’t need self-gratifying males to either turn them on or give them approval. And for that, and their iron-hard spines, they’re both stronger than you and more worthy of respect from anyone, including me, even if I have disagreed sharply with them before. Rock on, ladies. I’m following on your heels now; I’ve gotten my rush of female heels crushing male heads for the month.

Heh, this thread is a textbook example of what happens to rational male discourse once a herd of P.M.S.ing, emotionally hypercharged harpies stampedes in and derails it totally, twisting meaning, getting personal, suppressing discourse and replacing it with vitriolic flaming and shaming.

There are of course exceptions such as Suz and Grerp, for instance, who have a remarkable ability to remain calm and intellectually discuss the issue at hand. I am deeply thankful to these women who show me time and again there is still hope for at least a few of their sex.

As for the rest: suffice to say, I see the notion vindicated yet again…that men – by and large – are searchers for the truth, while women, on the other hand, are seekers for their momentary agenda.

Naturally, there are many bad men out there as well. But throughout my life…I have oftentimes observed that a man will thank you for honest counsel, for showing him some inconvenient, painful aspect about himself. He will thank you because notwithstanding the pain / shame / inconvenience it may cause him in the short run…in the mid to long run it allows him to improve himself.

Most women, conversely, will hate you with a venomous passion for holding a mirror to their faces (as evidenced just now in this thread). Most do not want to face reality, prefering to exist in a bubble of illusions instead. I learned this the hard, painful way. But having learned it, I find myself better versed in communicating with them. Because if I just use flufftalk, teasing, emotional role playing etc….in short nothing serious….my interaction is a lot more effective and fun than any time I go for discussion / discourse.

Might that be why men of auld tended to keep women out of the political sphere? Because the had all these insights, and knew from personal experience the dangers of unleashing the female on the body politic?

Grerp saidWe’re all going to be catty sometimes, but let’s not make an art form of it. Dalrock’s not the problem. The women at TC are not the problem. Focus on the problem.
And the problem is that the kids get destroyed in divorce. The problem is that people are acting as barrack lawyers instead of taking the commandments seriously. (Look I disagree with Alte about the magisterium. She’s Catholic. I’m reformed, and think the legalism of Catholicism…. won’t go there). But she is right about us twisting words.
And going to the gutter.

Funny you’re the one bringing ‘bitches’ into this discussion. You have stayed away from discussing the article yet you willing to attack anyone defending men. It must gall you to have a women do that. You are the bitch here. No intelligent dicussion from you and you just dragged the discussion into the gutter.

Some women are wishing their husbands would cheat so the women will have an excuse to get out of their marriages. The husbands aren’t bad. They’ve done nothing wrong other than not be exciting. They’re not felons. They’re not abusers. They’re not cheats.

Yet the women just don’t want to be married to their husbands anymore.

These women want a way out, but they need a way out that minimizes their culpability. That way is some moral failing.

“You looked at porn! That’s CHEATING!”
“You had an affair because we haven’t had sex for five years because I don’t want to. But you’re still married to me. That’s CHEATING (even though I kinda forced you into it)!”

What makes this worse is that the North American Church (meaning the Christian institution comprised of the American Roman Catholic Church, mainline protestant denominations and the evangelical/fundamentalist/charismatic denominations) are making this worse by giving women the above “outs” from marriage. “Porn!” “Cheating!”

Dammit, you can call it a dispensation, an annulment, or a divorce but any damn way you slice it, it’s still the end of a marriage, it will still produce f**ked up children who’ve never seen a marriage that works, and it will still bankrupt everyone involved.

SCW asked:

“The men in my life protect women, this is the natural way for a man to treat a woman. Are you men saying that since there are feminists in this world, that women no longer need the protection of their men? It really confuses me because you are a father and husband, so I know you have women in your life that you dearly love and would protect; so how is your cause helping them and not hurting them in the future?”

Women need the protection of good men even more because there are feminists in this world. Many women don’t think well for themselves, being susceptible to the herd mentality. Good women need good men to keep them from being led astray.

This blog holds up a mirror to modern society, strips away false veneers of “equality” and “fairness” and “justice” and “right”. It shows what the divorce culture and feminism has really does to a free society. The divorce meat grinder, spawned by feminism, is a 40 year crisis of epidemic proportions that has almost completely destroyed our political, social and educational institutions, our economy, our culture, and with them, our society. The family is the basic buidling block of a free market, capitalist representative republic. Destroy the family, you destroy society.

Yet men are being told they must work to earn money so as to make themselves good husband material. Men are told they must marry and commit their lives to women who have slept with enough men to staff a couple of football teams and who will simply hope their husbands cheat on them so they can divorce later for cash and prizes. Men are being told that when their wives leave them, they will have to pay over more than 75% of their gross income for alimony and child support.

The Church is corrupt to the core. It presents women in their 30s who have never married, doesn’t ask why, and stands with them wailing “Where are all the good men!” But it goes several steps more. The Church presents these used up, crudded up sluts as “nice Church girls” and demands that men line up to marry them. The Church flat out lies to these girls, telling them all they have to do is pray a prayer and they are now “clean” and pure as the driven snow, ready for the rigors and the long haul of marriage, work and child rearing. The Church does nothing — NOTHING — to tell these unfortunate women the truth of what they have done to their own lives and what they’ll do to the lives of their men and their children if they don’t get their shit squared away.

The Church does not do the hard work of telling these women the truth of what they have to do to get better so they can make themselves at least a little bit ready for marriage and child rearing (assuming they can still have children). The Church is not devoting itself to the real work of salvation, redemption and imposition of consequences — work it used to do very well and which made it a vital part of this society. The Church used to take these reprobates and sorry excuses for humanity, tell them the truth of what they’ve done, help them understand the consequences, that they might have to walk out those consequences for the rest of their lives, and clean them up as best they can. Some of them had to do very hard work to redeem themselves.

No more. The Church is now all about “experiences” and conferences and meetings and “pray the prayer and you’re FREE!!” and buy the Pastor’s sweat-soaked handkerchief for a small donation to the Lord’s work.

If the church were doing its job, it would be dealing with married women much more sternly than it does.

You made a commitment. You must now live up to it. You promised to love, honor, obey and cherish him, no matter what.

You’re not haaaappy? Tough. Wait a few months. You’ll feel better. Even if you don’t feel better, you’ll get over it. No, you don’t get to divorce him because you’re not haaaappy.

I don’t give a damn that he fapped it to porn a few times. That’s not cheating. Go home and be kind to your husband. No, you don’t get to divorce him because he fapped it.

I don’t care that he yelled at you a few times because he had a bad day at work. What, you don’t have bad days? you don’t raise your voice to your husband? No, you don’t get to divorce him because he’s not very good at controlling his temper.

Haven’t had this much fun perusing a comment thread … has the quality of a cafeteria food fight at times.

But divorce is truly serious business. And while foolishness in cafeteria food fights is not exclusive to either sex, foolishness in divorce is weighted far too heavily on the women’s side. Dalrock has been performing a public service all along to show us just how much of that female foolishness is out there.

I just slogged through this entire tedious comment thread. The only reason I did so was to see what led up to deti’s comment.

Deti: +1, full stip, cosign.

But…pffft. I could have skipped all of it, read Deti, and missed almost nothing. Damn it, thi is a major tip-off by the Huffer Po on modern culture. WImmenz who want their hubbies to cheeat in order to justify the betrayal that they already have planned out. Yes, that is the word: BETRAYAL.Because that is what is under discussion by Dalrok, here.

And that is what no church, not any church in North America, has the stones to address. No institution. Not any think tank, not any Defender of Marriage, not any church college, not any bishop or preacher or pastor, not any TV evangelist. No one aside from the eeeevil “manosphere” will even touch the issue of women who deliberately betray their oath, their promise, their family, their husband, for personal gain.

Well, the “manosphere” is here. Indeed, we are everywhere. Next time you white knights, manginas, hypocritical churchian ladies are loudly holding forth in some public place about how rotten men are, look around. Somewhere within earshot, there might be a piece of the “manosphere” dutifully transcribing it for further use. And y’all probably won’t even notice him…

Yes, that’s right. We are everywhere. And we hand out glasses to our brothers for free…

I’m trying to figure out here CL, what the heck your problem is with SCW.

I’m not nearly Canadian enough to be mistaken for CL, but I’ll chime in with what bugs me about SCW:

I don’t know how to explain how God talks to me, he just does and I know he does and I know it is Him. … God told me that I could do what I wanted this time, I could leave my husband or stay with him.

I’m pretty suspicions of people who hear “God” speaking personally to them. I’m really suspicious of people who claim that God’s given them a personal pass to do whatever the hell they feel like. People like that are creepy and dangerous.

I don’t have much faith in my husband right now, I’m not depending on him, I don’t feel loved by him, and I definitely don’t trust him.

Not overlooking the fact that SCW’s husband has broken his vows and acted very badly, this is some poisonous sh*t. No way in hell she should be publishing this.

That line is the gift that keeps on giving. The twinkies’ name is forgotten, by her line will live on forever.

That must be my biggest contribution to the MRA effort then. I don’t remember who said it (“chels” if I had to guess) but I provoked that comment by pointing out that I had never in my life had I heard a woman defending a man or saying something good about men without qualifiers. The reply was that all the women were defending men in their heads.

Still true by the way. Never in my life have a heard a woman say something good about men without qualifying by explaining how, overall, we are still awful and unworthy. And I have been listening specifically for this for months now.

No, Dalrock. It’s not that I want to “pretend I didn’t send it.” It’s that if I wanted a public confrontation I would have confronted you publicly. Additionally, I had no way of knowing you even got it since you didn’t respond, except to do so publicly weeks later. I found that a strange way of responding is all.

The truth is that when I reveal the correspondence of an email, I tell the person I’m going to do so because I understand that if they wanted to say what they had to say publicly they would have commented rather than emailing me.

But really, I have no hard feelings. I just cannot figure out why SCW was attacked. It made no sense to me given that she did something so extraordinary in this culture, even among Christian women who can always find a pastor to give them a “get-out-of-marriage-free” card. Especially after multiple affairs.

She stayed and she’s working on it. The fact that she is attacked leaves me incredulous. I honestly don’t get it. Unless the consensus is that a woman is wrong no matter what, even when she clearly isn’t.

Comprehensive post, each individual thing is covered frequently, some even together, this one draws them all in. The control and empathy garnering effects of the new Christian marriage are well explained.
Friend of my wifes pulled this, not just the jettisoning of a good man, heck several friends did that….gotta mention the one as its cliche, left her husband and kids to go on the road with her salsa teacher, I aint makin that up! Walked away from 2 kids, house, solid beta man, beautiful home just outside the northern suburbs of Houston on acreage, took very little, left custody with man, and lived the dream of competitive salsa….cha cha cha….
But another her and husband were both on the top end of looks scale, after they split (4 kids) and she got everything, she dropped off the radar for awhile, soon facebook pics started showing up of her soaked in wet t shirts and sponsor parties galore, she spoke to my wife saying well we dont have much in common anymore but you gotta hear about the string of hot guys I been bangin…..1 year earlier she was a singer on the praise team of a large non denom church….oh well.
The idea that 70% of divorces are filed by women is inadequate to account for the real numerical effect women have on the divorce rate

Im going to be guilty of topic mining again Dalrock. There is yet another thread over at Christian forums you need to look at, this one is about a man and women beating the crap out of each other in fits of female initiated violence, then the sistas chiming in with the “but he is big and ugly and stronger oh and did I mention hairy”….
Background is this woman and man have some kind of mutual jealousy thing going and sort ot with blood and fist instead of words. But the players are the same as the other one I linked but the topic is DV, and police, and all that. The gal is very attractive if its her pic on her post, so assuming we have 2 good looking young people here who have sexual pasts and cant stand it. Oh, of course add porn to the mix.

You said, “She stayed and she’s working on it. The fact that she is attacked leaves me incredulous.”

The attacks are for the WAY she’s “working on it.” She’s not working on it at all, she’s just pretending:

“I don’t know how to explain how God talks to me, he just does and I know he does and I know it is Him. … God told me that I could do what I wanted this time, I could leave my husband or stay with him.”
“I don’t have much faith in my husband right now, I’m not depending on him, I don’t feel loved by him, and I definitely don’t trust him.”
(Thanks, Twenty. Straight to the heart of it, as usual.)
“… yes I may have contributed to it…”

Elspeth, THESE are the words of “traditional” Christian wife? Twice now, she has pushed her husband away (and no, it doesn’t justify his affairs) yet she claims she still wants to be married to him.
If SCW wanted a marriage, she would have gone to the trouble of learning how to build one, and she’d have fixed her mistakes instead of repeating them. I’ll hazard a guess that she just wants to avoid the inconvenience and “shame” among her GFs, of a divorce. She isn’t behaving like a true wife because she doesn’t have the mentality of a true wife. She thinks her power lies in being superior to her husband, and she even “contributed to” his downfall. Having the power do beat down a man is no great feat; a wife’s REAL power lies in “contributing to” her husband’s growth into the best, most godly man he can become – a man she (and everyone else) can honestly respect. SCW can’t bring herself to that level of humility though, can she? She never dared, even when she was “in love” with him, to let go of her pride and allow him so much as the opportunity to maybe, just maybe, become morally superior to her. No. She started out with the assumption that she was the superior one, and she made sure he lived down to his inferiority.

What we don’t know objectively, but can assume based on extrapolation is the dynamic of the marriage before affairs. No, Im not going to make a simple remark about sexual denial and mens proclivities though that may or may not have had some effect.
I will remark that few Christian women, especially those who use the language of “God told me”, do NOT act like the personal holy spirit of the husband. In fact, there is a hard correlation, the more “spiritual” , in other words the more the women quotes scripture and seems to be grounded in sound biblical relational principles, the more prone she is to be managing her husbands “walk”, taking on the role of holy spirit assistant, and judging the husband in his role as compared to the standards that God sets for husbands.

The simple fact is the roles are between God and the individual, but the more devout the woman appears, the more spiritually superior she perceives herself. This manifests in an additional layer of control, to go along with all the other non religion based layers, she has the personal Jesus backing her on this. Here is where it gets really twisted. She honest to goodness doesn’t realize she is doing this, her intentions generate the feelings she wants from her actions, and that covers a multitude of dysfunctional behaviors. She escalates the rationalization of control through first just some vague evangelical Christian task master list that is all the rage these days, where the man is leading family prayers and devotionals and teaching veritable VBS to the kids complete with songs and crafts…..lest she see him as failing to the the Christian leader he is “called to be”….I mean come on the preacher said so. The next level is her “study” of scripture, unconsciously mining scripture for things she needs to watch out for in him, while finding morw and more and more empowerment to her, even in how she reads biblical admonishments. These are read one of a few ways.

1. If an admonishment is to men, and easily seen as about male behaviors (think sex) thats cool, dig in and be an expert, go to lexicons and milk the lust in the heart for everything you can

2. If the admonishment is genderless, she adheres with a vengeance and claims piety

3. If it has to do with women, well that would be shocking because she has decided in advance thats not the case, merely “interpret” your way around it. An example would be dont deny sex unless mutually agreed. The de rigeuer definition of that scripture now is its not saying dont deny sex, its saying dont deny benevolence, which means being nice to each other….cracks me up, “honey, lets by agreement agree to not be nice for a time of fasting and prayer” Or the other example is where it says “let the unbeliever go” she can measure the man, claim he is an unbeliever, and she can divorce….never mind none of that makes a wit of sense vs scripture.

So now she has the task list and the scriptures covered, but its not enough.. Someone said “its not religion its relationship” and that Jesus would serve as husband when she needed that connection and hubby was failing, so, she invents a Jesus that not only gives her strength but gives her advice no different than a human man would if competing for her vs the husband. This imaginary friend creates all kinds of problems as it tells her what is wrong with her husband , and how.

All that is the actual back drop of the Christian marriage in the U.S……today, and for the past couple of decades. Add fairy tale expectations, men taught to communicate like women, etc. and men are better off being quiet, and taking what little joy that can from some occasional sex, a round of sport w/ a friend in a blue moon, and some TV or books.

So, he has an affair, and she stays. Great, he was indeed dead wrong to do so, and she didnt literally drive him to do it. But life as the Christian husband today pretty much can stink, the conundrum of him having to actually celebrate his attempts to fit this mold, even attend mens groups set to hold him accountable to these molds, it drives men crazy.

I remember when I was in midst of divorce, the Christian men friends I had were useless, truly useless. I found solace in new friends who were maybe Christians maybe not, I dont know, but they empathized and got me out of the rut. The Christian husband having an affair is wrong. His life dealt him by the church and his well intended wife who cannot begin to see past her nose to her own gynocentric narcissism is a prison where each day is drudgery. Is it any wonder. Many of these men would be happy if the wife dumped them if they were left w/ resources to live on. Maybe her husband is one of them that would welcome the divorce, even if he says otherwise, because even his words are influenced by the Christian marriage expectations of the age

+1. Cosign this. I’ve seen this same thing play out over and over again.

I’d like to ask Sheila Gregoire and other female Christian leaders why they don’t teach these Scriptures:

–Wives, submit to your husbands….
–God hates divorce.

I’ve said several times: If Gregoire wants to improve the marriages of her readers, all she has to do is teach “Wives, submit to your husbands…” I suggest it’s not an accident that this comes BEFORE “husbands, love your wives….”.

One of the key takeaways for me is the limitless capacity and energy of the rationalization hamster.

“I’m stuck in a good marriage. He makes OK money. He loves my kids. He’s not a criminal or a cheat. But … but…. there’s something MISSING. My husband doesn’t “lead” me like Christ says he should. He doesn’t do devotionals for the kids. He ….

“I want out of this marriage. I’m not happy with him. I’m tired of being married to him. It’s all work. I can’t do this anymore. Need to find a way out. I wish he would have an affair so I can leave him! But he hasn’t. And he won’t. I didn’t know how difficult it is for men to just go out and find another woman to have sex with. It never occurred to me that I’m the best woman he’s ever known or had. He probably would have a hard time finding another woman even if he wanted to.

“I feel so GUILTY. I want out, but I have no way out because he hasn’t done anything wrong. I wish he would do SOMETHING. Please HIT ME! Please HAVE AN AFFAIR! I need someone else to take the responsibility for my feelings! I need someone else to be responsibie for destroying my life, my soon to be ex husband’s life, and the lives of my children!

“That’s IT! He didn’t cheat on me, but he WANTS to! Ha! He has to feel guilty for wanting to cheat! After all, if he looked on another woman with lust, he committed adultery with her in his heart! Thank you personal Jesus, that’s IT! Now where was the number for that divorce lawyer…..”

“I don’t know how to explain how God talks to me, he just does and I know he does and I know it is Him.”

I’ve dated quite a bit after my divorce and found the usual attitudes described in this and other posts. But I was set up with a “Christian” woman and we really hit it off. She presented as this pious church going Christian whose husband cheated on her so they finally got divorced.

We went out few times and just when I thought there was some potential we had a discussion about what she was going to do to set herself up with a job that actually paid enough money to live on. She admitted she had no plan for anything. Her exact words to me were, “He has a plan for me for work and love and He will show me when He is ready”. So we talked a bit more and she described how the issues in her marriage weren’t her fault. She described all the faults of her husband and how they were there from the beginning. Bad sex, anger, you name it. I finally asked her why she married him in the first place. She had no answer. BTW, she also told me she found the church when she turned 30 and was still unmarried, a fact that didn’t hit home with me until much later.

Then she asked me to attend Church with her and I agreed more out of curiosity than anything as I have not set foot in a church in well over a decade. TFH refers to this “Sunday Morning Nightclub” routine and many others talk about how the church has become this catch all for middle aged divorcees looking to be reborn. But I was not prepared for the sheer numbers of unattached middle aged women who were at this church. I did not see any men there sitting alone. None. So I waited for my own message from Him as to what I should do. And He delivered. My “date” asked me if I wanted to be married again and when that might happen.

That’s when I said my own prayer. “Thank you Lord for giving me the strength to run as fast as I can from this woman”.

Well forget feminism, lets just hate women, especially hypocritical Christian ones! Newsflash for you–the church is filled with hypocrites and sluts (half of them men), but so is the rest of the world. The only difference is the ones at church are trying to heal.

I guess I thought the scripture blogs actually meant something here and got confused about what kind of blog this was. Nope it is a women-hating, men can do anything place. I understand now.

The problem is, if you want to actually change the laws regarding divorce and women, then you are going to need some women on your side and as long as you are blatantly hating them, no one is going to take you seriously.

Bingo. There is a woman on the Christian forum who somehow tracked her husbands TV viewing, and found that he had too great an interest in women’s tennis. He was clearly lusting for the players.

One thing to add to this, once a man has an actual affair, or he looks at porn, or whatever she thinks makes him having adultery in his heart, he will never never ever ever be free to move through life again. I suspect some women like the idea of the affair to justify divorce, OH BUT, they do not realize the power they will get if they keep the poor sod. They know, and they are correct, that they will never have that degree of power over another man. So, post affair, man is begging and willing to do whatever, why give up a man like that? Its straight out of Joel and Kathy Davissons God Save my Marriage ministry where the man serves at the pleasure of the wife, period.

SCW may like being in control that way, its a small price to pay to get that kind of moral authrity handed you.

But lets not forget my names sake. SHE GETS EMPATHY. Women crave empathy like men crave sex. To be able to sit down and dial phone numbers and tell friend after friend how wronged she is, and get that “oh sweet I know just how you feel” empathagasm is euphoric. By day women seek to escalate the smallest things to a level that they can be cast as empathy lures in the female emotional sea. When your husband has lusted, in his heart or in her pants, you are gonna catch trophy size large mouth empathy. You can use it as contemporary for a year at least, and you can whip it out for years to come even after a divorce, in fact she will take the lust of the ex and use it as leverage to control the new man. He, the white knight, will be happy to prove “Im not like other guys”…..so what happens then?

—————————————————————————————————————
This is an interesting statement, because it actually may be true, but not as you intended it. Healing means simply the ability to file the things under the emotion that feels good….ie healed. Healing is either rationalization, or its rerererererere dedication to keep doing the same things over and again.

Feminism as a word is useful for evangelical feminists because its easy to find cover with it. Gynocentrism is far batter for churchies.

Oy, the hate women thingy, seriously, you can do better than that. When upwards of 80% of divorces can be tied back to women, while the church proceeds as if 90% of divorces are tied back to men, not to mention 99% of all sin is tied to men (while women’s biggest sin is low self esteem), and the ministry offerings in church are designed to hold men accountable, and to boost women’s self esteem,

KNOW THIS, the reaction here is not some flippant woman hating thing, thats a convenient kafka trap to try and address real concerns with bogus accusations. What you see here is what blow back looks like, its what one side fed the heck up with the situation sounds like when they seek redress and balance from a situation so far off center our resistance looks like women hating.

“The problem is, if you want to actually change the laws regarding divorce and women, then you are going to need some women on your side and as long as you are blatantly hating them, no one is going to take you seriously.”

Blatantly hating men did not stop women from succeeding in instituting these laws. What you are saying is that hating the opposite sex is only a problem if men do it.

No, the women there want to be seen as adhering to traditional norms of morality whether they do or not.

They want the rights of feminism and the privileges and honor of Christian womanhood. They want both.

In order to have both, they have to maintain a false reputation and blame men for all their misdeeds, and shout down those who insist that they have to choose – really choose – between feminism and Christianity.

My God. Even a woman being cheated on is just in it for the martyrdom, according to 7man.

Seriously? The woman’s moniker is Sexy Christian Wife, and she has a blog where she complains about how mean her husband is and how he cheats on her (and how her Holy Hamster told her what to do). Yet you doubt that this woman is an attention whore on the first order? Not only all of the above, but (quoting from memory):

Oh my, Dalrock, I just can’t tell if you are one of the big strong good men, or the nasty evil ones who are so mean to me. I’m just a little ol’ wronged sexy Christian wife, won’t you ride in with your white horse and rescue me?

“I guess I thought the scripture blogs actually meant something here and got confused about what kind of blog this was. Nope it is a women-hating, men can do anything place. I understand now.”

You misunderstand. No one here hates women. Women post here all the time. We see women for who and what they are: flawed, imperfect human beings.

I get exercised about the Church’s role in the war on men. You know why? I am a Nicene Creed- style believer. I was raised in the Church. I was brought up in the “fear and admonition of the Lord.” I went to Sunday School, sang in the choir, moved to a new city and one of the first things I did was find a pastor as part of a support group, and taught Sunday School.

I sort of left church for a long time in college and grad school.

The Church I returned to after a bit of an extended absence is not at all the church I left about 10 years before.

The Church I left held men AND women’s feet to the proverbial fire. SCriptural truths were preached. Divorce was frowned on as a minor scandal. You held to the straight and narrow.

The Church I returned to is a social club in which people come for the Sunday morning meeting which needs to start on time and be done in exactly one hour and 15 minutes so wifey can get to her spin class and her personal trainer (wink wink nudge nudge) and so hubby can get back to work to pay for that spin class and the personal trainer’s fee.

The Church now preaches feel good sermons on peace, love, harmony, equality, social justice, and “tolerance” instead of repentance, redemption, salvation and forgiveness. Give, give, give your money for the starving Ethiopian children! Give, give give for the food pantry!

“Don’t you men DARE judge anyone! How dare you judge any woman for her transgressions! You young single men need to stop playing those video games, get jobs and marry the 32 year old sluts with the petri dish pelvises and 20 (no, 10) (uhh, sorry), 4 past sex partners! Yeah, that’s it, that’s the ticket! (Because the oral sex and the drunk sex and the sex on vacation in Cancun don’t count, see.) And don’t you men run this nasty, dark, Satanic thing some of these men are calling “Game” on these sweet, innocent women! That’s fraud! That’s lying! That’s manipulation!”

uhh, yeah, but aren’t make up and push up bras and high heels and fudging, uh, well, outright LYING about your past sex partners kinda fraud, and lying and manipulation?

“Stop asking those stupid questions, young man, and line up to marry the sluts!”

The women in church are so incredibly ultrahypergamous that no man alive could possibly satisfy them. This is because she’s (1) a young inexperienced woman who has been told all her life she is a “daughter of the King” and a “princess of the Kingdom” and that “Jesus is her boyfriend”. Any man who dates her has to look like Brad Pitt or George Clooney, and be rich like Warren Buffett.

Or (2) she’s between ages 28 and 35, off a failed marriage or never married, with a partner count in the double digits. She’s got an abortion in there somewhere and her Valtrex prescription ready to go. She’s off the carousel for whatever reason, and has arrived at church to meet potential husbands. The pastor has prayed over her, she’s accepted Jesus as her personal savior, yes sirree Bob, yes indeedy she has. She’s now been proclaimed to have a clean spiritual bill of health and is ready for marriage. Never mind the fact that no one has told her she needs to come clean about what she did IN THE NATURAL and how that will affect her.

No one has sat her down to explain things like attraction, hypergamy, and pair bonding. No one has sat her down to explain to her that the number of men she’s had sex with will probably make it very difficult for her to pair bond with one man. No one has told her that the problems that messed up all her other dealings with men ARE STILL THERE and will rear their heads again when she gets involved with another man, and especially if she marries a Christian man. No one has explained to her that Christian men love God, but they are still men — they get horny, get erections and like sex just like the alpha douchebags she is used to. No one has explained to her that marriage is not like golf — you don’t get do-over Mulligans for free.

No one has explained to her the sad truth that in light of her personal past history, most men will not want to marry her. No one has told her that the men who will be willing to marry her will be good, kind men, but probably will not be rich like Bill Gates or look like Brad Pitt. No one has told her to lower her expectations and that she will have to be satisfied with what she can get — and that’s IF any man will have her. No one has told her that her husband is probably not going to be the washboard abs kings like the douchebags she used to take home from the bars.

But most crucially, no one has sat her down to tell her and confront her with this, and I’m going to shout it in caps:

ALL OF THIS IS OF YOUR DOING. ALL OF THIS IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY, AND NO ONE OTHER THAN YOU IS RESPONSIBLE FOR IT. NO ONE “DID THIS TO” YOU. THIS DID NOT “JUST HAPPEN” TO YOU. YOU DID IT. YOU SLEPT WITH ALL THOSE MEN. YOU CHOSE TO DO SO. YOUR LIFE NOW IS A DIRECT RESULT OF YOUR CHOICES. YOU MUST OWN IT, TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR IT AND EXAMINE WHY YOU SLEPT WITH THOSE MEN IF YOU ARE TO HAVE ANY CHANCE AT A LASTING RELATIONSHIP WITH ANY MAN.

I hate that the Church I loved has deteriorated into a dating service for sluts and failures and douchebags.

I have a SIL who I joke saying she uses “The Lord told me to” way too much. Put the left shoe on first…..well later she may avoid twisting her ankle and she will then tell anyone who will listen that she was told to tighten her shoe laces…..its used at least 3 times in any 5 minute conversation.

I understand pray without ceasing, I really do. But the personal Jesus concept has made that something very different, and the luster is off, the awe is gone, except the awe we’d have for a good friend who “knows just how you feel sweety”.

She does confess the controlling stuff that I predicted she would. Im intimately familiar with this problem, I leave it at that, not born of an affair, just the wife as holy spirit and spiritually superior.

See, its like this, the woman is in dialog with Jesus all day about everything. So, no matter what the husband says, she will have an opinion and it is backed with “God told me________”. Who can argue with that? Mkgal over at Christian forums has an entire belief set built of what she has been told, over what she can read plainly. Women love this new aspect of the faith, where by asking God for His personal take on xyz, she can say but God, listen, here is how it is FOR ME, my husband does this and my childhood was that, and there was the man who carried me on his shoulders when I was 6 and that seems like he molested me and no body understood me and still dont and yes Im overweight but I eat for comfort and I know that you God can understand and adapt your words to mean something slightly different than what they say right? I mean men are sleazy and always thinking of sex, but my friend Madison told me her husband prayed and he never even thinks of sex unless she is around so men can be delivered from theor sexual nature and my feelings on sex are that if he just wants sex thats no good and back me up here God because its about the oneness and I cant have sex on drop of hat its gotta work up all day, unless of course Im single and in a new relationship and we cant get past the door jam without hittin’ it.

“The first woman to comment is married to a man that had a two affairs (with ONE woman) and, typically of women, she wants validation to keep her winning lottery ticket, so she can claim prizes whenever God tells her to cash it in.”

This. THIS. Let me add that no one should have an objection to praying for guidance and comfort in a difficult situation. SCW made a choice to stay with her husband after he had two affairs with the same woman. One can question her wisdom, but not her commitment.

The problem comes when we push off all responsibility onto God, or another person. This is what it sounds like SCW has done. Whatever happens, she’s not responsible for it and she doesn’t have to do anything. SCW comes off as saying essentially “I asked God what to do and He told me to stay so I stayed. I’m not responsible for whatever happens. If my husband strays again, it’s on God and He has to fix it. If I’m not haaaaappy, it’s on God and He has to fix it.”

Women cannot have it both ways. They cannot be StrongIndependentWomen (TM) who can work 80 hours a week and marry and have kids and go to PTA meetings and have pornstar sex with their Adonis husbands, and then say “God told me to do it so it’s on Him”.

If women insist on being moral actors, then they must accept responsibility for their own free wills and the consequences of their own individual choices.

“According to some surveys Catholic women are more likely to have an abortion than non-Catholic women. So the White House, which has chosen to pick an open fight with the Catholic Church, is taking advantage of a situation where religiously-aligned women aren’t principled in their church’s teachings. I’m not sure Catholic women recognize their desire for sexual freedom is about to undo the most closely-held teachings of their church.”

…

“Someone once said if a dozen men were in a room with one woman. the men would be outnumbered. I won’t go there either. But just remember, under the banner of sexual freedom, freedom of religion has been trampled.”

Great stuff. My wife tried to bait me into cheating on her multiple times, or at least into giving her something to use to accuse me of it. She ultimately has left because she isn’t happy. Never loved me, blah, blah, blah. She sounds a lot like the woman who went down the isle and wouldn’t look at her fiance as she gave her vows. She thought I would be a good father, provider, etc, and the rest would come, and it would have if she hadn’t waited for it, and decided to work on it. The modern woman has a spirit of laziness. They expect the world to lay things at their feet. Whether its love, money, comfort, or pleasure. Like a child who doesn’t get their way, they will destroy whatever obstacle to their happiness if they are not stopped.

The problem is, if you want to actually change the laws regarding divorce and women, then you are going to need some women on your side and as long as you are blatantly hating them, no one is going to take you seriously.
This woman that wrote this will change the laws of misandry if and when it is in her own selfish interest. Oh yes and will do so with the same attitude and anger at men she has while writing it. The key to changing this and the church does not lie in changing the hearts of the christian women but in changing the hearts of the church. The laws can and will change and but not with a change in the feral nature of women. (which will never happen BTW)

Good post. You are right to say that women need / would like to have a built in excuse why they leave their marriages. Even the most mercenary feminist feels some shame and guilt for acting so selfishly. But it is much more than the social opprobrium, if there are children involved with the failed marriage they end up judging the situation as well. When mom escapes her unhappy marriage there is a lot more collateral damage than just the ex-husband. Much of the aftermath of a divorce like you describe is the custodial parent trying to infuse as much pro-mom anti-dad propaganda as possible to not only win the hearts of the children but avoid the blame for the inevitable consequences of their actions. Sooner or later the kids figure out what really happened but sometimes that can take very long indeed.

“Sooner or later the kids figure out what really happened but sometimes that can take very long indeed.”

When I first got divorced I relied on a good older friend who had been divorced and happily remarried for over twenty years. He told me that when he got divorced his ex did exactly as you described. She tried her mightiest to paint him as a terrible person. His advice was to keep being the same dad to your kids. He said that the kids eventually figure out who was the issue. His kids hit their mid twenties, figured it out and came to him asking him why he even married their mother in the first place. It apparently took longer because she had full custody.

In my case it has taken about three years. I split custody with my ex and we have the kids equal amounts of time. My kids have started to come to me and ask why their mom is crazy. Yes, crazy. Really high one moment, screaming at them the next, or almost catatonic at times. And these are teenagers.

I see a day in the not too distant future where they just live with me full time. And their mother will likely find it a relief. She can then devote herself full time to finding happiness.

I hope someone takes the time to comment in the comment section of the article that insipered this post as well. The manosphere needs to do more of that to get the arguments out there and to get more people into the blogs by linking to them in comment sections.

2. Learn and understand why you slept with those men. Tell one other person whom you trust all (and I mean ALL) the things you did and all the men you did them with. All of the sex counts. ALL. OF. IT. Be unflinchingly honest about all of it. Then own it. Take full responsibility for it.

3. Get a good deprogramming from feminism. Learn about how attraction really works. No dating, no sex, no relationships for a year.

4. Accept and come to terms with the fact that your sexual market value is considerably higher than your marriage market value. The men willing to marry you will not be the hot, great looking alpha douchebags who happily sexed you until they got tired of you.

5. Accept and come to terms with the fact that you have severely damaged your ability to pair bond with one and only one man. Some can overcome this. Some cannot. You will have to expend great effort to overcome this; and you will probably have to fake it sometimes for the sake of your husband and children. If you cannot overcome this, you should not marry.

6. Get a head to toe physical with an inside and out gyno exam complete with testing for all STDs and a battery of blood and urine workups. You need to know if you have STDs and any effects on your ability to have sex and children.

7. Learn and live a new way of life. Lose the douchebags’ phone numbers. No more barhopping. Don’t hang with your slut friends. Get rid of the social media pages and quit your attention whoring and status whoring. Get some new friends and, while you’re at it, get a more modest wardrobe. Ditch the foul language. Never talk about sex or use profanity in public.

For a lot of divorced moms, particularly younger ones, it is relatively easy to change the facts on the ground. If they become the custodial parent they have a much easier time boxing out the other parent. This also makes things much worse when there is parental alienation or abuse going on. At this point, if mom moves away (move away mommies) then she is able to completely erase her past history. The few people left in her life who knew here when are typically “friends of the bride” such as her mom or maternal relatives who naturally take her side. As Orwell wrote, “He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.” This now leaves mommy in her new setting to recreate her image as victim and martyr. All the people in her life, whether that is in church, work, school, etc. only know her good side and if they know anything about the father, his bad side. Complete control.

It is harder to pull off as time goes by. Older children are more observant and had a relationship with dad already. Jobs, careers, communal debts, property all make it harder to separate cleanly. Any divorce lawyer worth his or her salt will write in a move away clause prohibiting the other parent from moving out of the area or county, and so on. But for a young and still physically attractive mother with one kid, the chance remains she can still find her Prince Charming. Falling short of that she can live her life in an autonomous self-centered way, the rest be damned.

Deti – ”Let me add that no one should have an objection to praying for guidance and comfort in a difficult situation. SCW made a choice to stay with her husband after he had two affairs with the same woman. One can question her wisdom, but not her commitment.

The problem comes when we push off all responsibility onto God, or another person. This is what it sounds like SCW has done. Whatever happens, she’s not responsible for it and she doesn’t have to do anything. SCW comes off as saying essentially “I asked God what to do and He told me to stay so I stayed. I’m not responsible for whatever happens. If my husband strays again, it’s on God and He has to fix it. If I’m not haaaaappy, it’s on God and He has to fix it.” “

Arriving (quite) late, and trying to do a quick read through the comments, I was, at first, a bit put off by what I thought to be an out-of-line response to this SCW. I would have thought that she was due a more sympathetic treatment, seeing as how she was the one who was cheated on, and had chosen to stay (and, I assumed, forgiven her wayward husband). I’d have thought a second offence would surely be a sign that the marriage was doomed, and would give her credit for being willing to try to work on it instead.

But, you actually explained something (significant) that I had over-looked (and possibly failed to notice if it had been mentioned previously), in that, as you note, she has essentially dumped all responsibility onto God.

I agree with you that in this, she is in error.

Still, I do feel sympathy for her in her plight of having to deal with the aftermath of a cheating spouse (I’d doubt I’d have been able to forgive one instance myself), and I do wish that even when we disagree with a particular person, that we could remain respectful of that person. While her site does certainly demonstrate the error you note, yet her first comment here made no allusion to any issues related to her husband having been unfaithful – so I wonder why it was ever brought up. And, in a subsequent response, she does sound rather reasonable in her discussion of her own situation.

When a new(er) commenter posits a debatable response here, I’d hope that we could first (and foremost) address our respective (individual) issues with that response.

In the case of SCW, judging by her questions to Dalrock: ”Are you men saying that since there are feminists in this world, that women no longer need the protection of their men? It really confuses me because you are a father and husband, so I know you have women in your life that you dearly love and would protect; so how is your cause helping them and not hurting them in the future?”,
She seems to me to be more confused about the idea’s represented in the Manosphere as opposed to being simply hostile to them. Perhaps she would be open to listening if we have the grace to treat her more respectfully. I firmly believe that we have no need to create more enemies than what we already have, so I’d hope we could try to find a way to reach the hearts and minds of people who are thusly confused, rather than try to immediately drive them away. [/my $0.02]

“The men in my life protect women, this is the natural way for a man to treat a woman. Are you men saying that since there are feminists in this world, that women no longer need the protection of their men? It really confuses me because you are a father and husband, so I know you have women in your life that you dearly love and would protect; so how is your cause helping them and not hurting them in the future?”

Speaking for no one but myself, and as someone who in the past was Mr. White Knight in my personal life, it is not the fact that there are feminists in this world, it is the fact that feminists have had an incredible amount of influence in the shaping in the world we now live in for close to a century now. Now, perhaps a number of women do not like the label feminists, or will not identify with some of their views, but the fact remains that many supported this actively (via their vote if nothing else) and/or passively (how many women have publicly spoken out against their overt misandry and anti-child policies?), and all have benefitted and continue to benefit regardless of any stance on a few issues here and there and pretty much none of them seem inclined to unslant the playing field.

So, from my point of view, speaking as a father and husband with women in my life, I love and protect them, but ‘women’ in general are entirely on their own as far as I’m concerned. And I can also tell you that the feminist ‘pro-women’ stuff is something they need protecting against, especially my daughter because feminists have to make sure girls grow up as damaged goods, so that they can grow up to be proper, man-hating feminists.

You may be correct to an extent, that being that the affair and her not bolting deserves some consideration. It could also be right that she doesnt understand whats said here.
But then the “you hate women” charge comes out. And, reading the blog and all the personal Jesus stuff, I have the feeling that it would be the same if he’d had porn in browser history 2 times instead of affair.

I also struggled with the fact that the implication is that these are separate affairs with more than one woman. Hopefully the men will understand what Im saying here, I fully expect female ire over saying it…..in no way am I excusing or lowering the offense of the cheating…not at all….I am pointing out that the inference is a bit disingenuous, its victim optimization. “He cheated with the same women X times”……vs……”he had X affairS” these things lead the reader to slightly different places and that bothered me

Again, “that there are feminists in the world” is hiding behind the term anyway. IF they are American/Canadian….and not Mennonites or Amish or something relatively obscure, they are feminists. Catholic, Protestant, evangelical, main line, whatever…..they ARE feminist. She SCW is a feminist, so is everyone she knows, and everyone they know.

Yup, this stuff happens, it happened to me…the wife wants out so she make baseless charges of abuse so that law enforcement serves a restraining order and you have 15 minutes to grab basic stuff and leave. No recourse; YOU ARE CONSIDERED GUILTY UNLESS YOU CAN SOMEHOW PROVE OTHERWISE after the fact. Not only that, since a restraining order is filed it becomes public record so your good name is smeared. Again, you have no recourse because the record is there.
Now some folks would say,”Well, we don’t want to risk some woman being killed because there is no system of protection.” All fine and good until you are falsely accused.

Paul – “So, from my point of view, speaking as a father and husband with women in my life, I love and protect them, but ‘women’ in general are entirely on their own as far as I’m concerned.”

I believe that one of the greatest protections that we as men in general can afford to women in general is to start telling them the truth – the whole truth. Then, they will have the knowledge with which to better choose their course of action (starting from a young, an hopefully virginal age) so as to have better long-term life outcomes. Obviously, if I were to start enumerating the many important aspects of that truth that the Manosphere has been engaged in discussing, it would become a prohibitively long post.

Hopefully the uninitiated readers, like SCW will take the time to actually read enough to grasp the truth that the Church, the feminists, and much of the rest of society has tried to conceal from them.

empathologicalism – “I also struggled with the fact that the implication is that these are separate affairs with more than one woman.”

What first came to my mind that what she is describing is, in reality, the continuation of a single long-term affair after a lengthy interruption.

It has been of argued that female infidelities tend to be more damaging to marriages in that they tend to involve more emotional bonding with their lovers (women checking out of marriages) along the lines of serial monogamy.

It seems to me that her husbands infidelity is not a couple of “flings” but rather an extra-marital partnering with the other women involving a significant deal of emotional bonding (as well as sexual bonding). In that regard, it struck me as the kind of infidelity that not only causes the hurt of being cheated on, but also the added instability of another person deeply ingrained into the life of the cheating spouse.

To give SCW some benefit of the doubt, it seems as though she’s struggling to make peace with her situation. In that regard, I do truly feel for her. Still, I think she is in error to say that it is on God (as opposed to simply resigning it to “being in God’ hands). As far as I’m concerned, it is entirely on her husband to stay on the straight and narrow. He has full moral agency, and the free will to choose his course of actions. It’s not Hod’s job to make him choose one way or the other. God’s will has certainly always been for him to do right. He has chosen to be disobedient to God’s will.

That said, I actually do understand all too well where many others are coming from on this matter, as it is more typically women who make it God’s job to keep them happy enough to follow his will (or, if he doesn’t, then it obviously wasn’t really his will). This seems just the odd case in which a wife expects God to make her husband happy enough.

Hopefully the uninitiated readers, like SCW will take the time to actually read enough to grasp the truth that the Church, the feminists, and much of the rest of society has tried to conceal from them.
—————————————————————————————————

Society isnt concealing anything. Its out in the big honkin open. The church isnt concealing anything either. Why would any woman want to see through this stuff? Its like a doubled dipped chocolate with all the stuff on it, who wants to trade that in for the nonfat yogurt? The stuff the church is selling is the stuff that human nature wants to buy, and THAT makes her haaaaaaapy.

See the problem, if you are able to see the reality of this, ESPECIALLY if you are female, it really feels like you awaken in slime, bald and pale….better to have the illusion of steak and fine wine.

I find it interesting, once again, to observe the different philosophies of men and women when it comes to dissenting opinions.

Here, on Dalrock we have today experienced the emotional outpourings of indignant ladies who attempted to shame Dalrock et al for their warranted critique. The response was a calm and factual rebuttal, a professional analysis of their flawed logic by Dalrock, deti and others.

I contrast this most sharply with my recent experience on HUS. I dared ask a few less than flattering questions about where to find all these supposedly intelligent women, who were interested in a myriad of fascinating topics.

Mrs. Walsh deleted the comment. I then called her on her act and she in response banned me for being a “woman hater”. Now, this is no big deal for me. I had actually expected as much from her and am not really surprised (though these were my first comments there after a 6 week pause).

What I do find fascinating is the difference in methods. I think men by and large do not have a problem with dissent, and are, in fact, ofttimes quite used to it. But for some reason many women seem to get upset by mere tone alone. Additionally, if the content is also less than flattering egos can quickly shatter.

I believe that and an oftentimes limited ability to argue a case using logic…quickly leads to these dearies adopting rather more fascistic tendencies…i.e. deleting / censoring comments and banning commenters for trifles.

Here is just what we need, a new show called Beware of Christians where some young dudes have this, like, totally new take on the faith, you know its like:

(quote from the interview on FOX)
“””“Most Christians feel like they have to be perfect all the time, and go to church, and there all these rules about drinking, sex and materialism,” Bakke told FOX411’s Pop Tarts column. “But it is not about church at all, it is about really getting to know Jesus, really developing your own, personal relationship with Him. When you have this, you will be compelled to act differently.”””””

————————————————————————-

Seriously? Really? Its about that personal relationship? Naw, we never heard about that before, man is it good to see young men breaking new ground or what

I may be too quick to judge SCW, but as I mentioned on a previous comment she has all of the markings of an attention whore of the first order. She has not only created a public blog where she complains about how bad her husband is, but she does so under the moniker of Sexy Christian Wife. Translation: Beta Orbiter’s Wet Dream. Honestly, I can see no other way to read her. I simply can’t believe that a woman would write such things under such a name and not be desperate for sympathy and attention. I can’t take her seriously in whatever her claimed quest for knowledge and understanding might or might not be.

Add that to the fact that her first comment ever on my site was to essentially identify with the women who are openly acknowledging they want to divorce frivolously, and then being indignant that I would lump her in with them (which I didn’t do, she did). Then she follows up with the laughable “Don’t you want to be a good man Dalrock?” manipulation. Sure, I’ll get right on that. Where can I take a number to join the ranks of your online beta orbiters. By the way, have I told you how hot you look doing X, and what a bad man your husband is?

However, if she were to change her name and come to participate in a more serious fashion, I would be open to hear what she has to say. Maybe she can come back under the moniker “Me f**** you long time wife” or “Me f*cky sucky good wife” and offer sincere questions about why her husband is so mean, and some pictures with a pouty face. Heck, I’ll even do a post in response to her then.

Maybe she can come back under the moniker “Me f**** you long time wife” or “Me f*cky sucky good wife” and offer sincere questions about why her husband is so mean, and some pictures with a pouty face. Heck, I’ll even do a post in response to her then.

I haven’t read all of the replies to the Original Poster (OP) and subsequent arguments, but I will say this – our court system and our culture are certainly geared to benefit the winner of the victim olympics.

This certainly explains both the awful behavior my ex did to make my life as miserable as hell, along with the constant “YOU’RE CHEATING ON ME!” gotcha game she played.

The court system was more than willing to play along, and even after 10 years of proven, awful behavior on her part, continues to take what she says at face value – willing to act on it “just in case”, “in the best interest of the chidrenz”, “we have to err on the side of caution”, or “why would she lie about such a thing?”

After more than a decade of experience in our ‘family law’ system, I can certainly agree there’s a double standard in accountability. Whatever evil she does, “he made her do it”, and we have to feel sorry for our earstwhile Andrea Yates, and blame Rusty for this poor abused woman who was forced to drown her children. No matter how much crap he’s had to endure, if he fails to act like a machine, if he screws up even once, (or can’t prove he didn’t), he’s as bad as Jeffrey Dhalmer, a menace to his wife and children, etc.

We have a system that rewards women for being ‘victims’ of their own decisions. Marriage has been destroyed by those people who felt it necessary to absolve women of the consquences of their decisions. Doubt me? The recent flap over women demanding ‘free’ birth control, vs the universal demand that men should be held accountable for women’s unilateral decisions to have children out of wedlock that they’re incapable of caring for.

The absolute insidious selfishness of this phony victimhood is apalling. Not only will women not take responsibility for what they want and what they do, they’re willing to throw their husband under the bus so give the illusion of being a victim and cash in on the victim prize by having him subsidize her decision.

And Huff-blow will be the first to write a slew of articles about single men being irresponsible man-children who can’t commit, when men refuse to buy into this crap. Women and feminism have made marriage a bad deal for men, yet it’s men’s fault for not wanting to stick our heads in the lion’s mouth for a lifetime of grief.

EMPATHOLOGICALISM – “Really? You took “affairs”, as mentioned HERE, on this blog, to mean multiple flings with the same woman?”

No. Of course not.Perhaps I wasn’t too clear, but what I was trying to point out was that what she was describing was something much more than two separate “flings” but more of a single long-term love affair, resumed after the interruption following the first exposure of that affair. I was trying to demonstrate that it seemed to be based on a deeper connection between him and the other women, an emotional commitment like that typically seen between unfaith wives and their lovers (i.e. the wife having largely “checked-out” on any sexual attraction for her husband, and transferred to her new man – like serial monogamy).

SCW’s husband seems to me to have not just been caught having had a couple of relatively meaningless flings based on sexual opportunity, without any real relationship; but actually has deep feeling for the other women (more like what wives have for their lovers), which adds a greater depth of harm to the marriage beyond the hurt that just sexual infidelity entails.

Or, you may have judge her correctly right-off. I glanced at her blog, but have been a bit busy, and haven’t really read it in-depth, so I’m the one who has the lesser basis for judgment about her.

I was just suggesting that, even though we might disagree deeply with what they post, it might make sense to first try to engage in debate with their comments (alone) rather than with them as a person (and all the baggage that might be underlying their comments). They might be open to hearing a different message than what they’ve been bombarded with so-long.

Of course, i might just be engaged in wishful thinking here. Susan Walsh seemed more open to new ideas – for a while, as I recall.

where the distinction between divortium perfectum and imperfectum is made clear.

@Dalrock

Your vitriol is misplaced and unnecessary. As it happens, I agree with what I understand to be your position on divorce among Christians and its effects on society–I merely wished to make a distinction between the Protestant position on divorce and the Catholic position. Your contention that the Church is corrupt because some of Her members misuse their authority is incorrect and illogical. It is tantamount to saying that because some senators accept bribes, the entire U.S. government is corrupt. Or that because some people cheat on their diet, that diet is inherently unworkable.

I do not know the Elusive Wapiti’s story, but what I gleaned from your article indicated that his wife had already asked for and received a civil divorce before seeking an annulment. Assuming there were no legitimate grounds for an annulment, the tribunal certainly erred in issuing it (and incidentally, an annulment does not render the children of that union illegitimate, according to Canon 1137), but their actions did not effect the reality of the civil divorce one way or the other. I do not know exactly what you mean by “recourse” against the “rogue bishop,” but in the annulment process, EW should have had an advocate who would help him defend the validity of the marriage bond, as well as a Defender of the Bond. If the tribunal still ruled that the marriage was invalid, EW would have had a second chance with a Court of Appeals, and thereafter a third chance with the Roman Rota (the Apostolic tribunal). I do not know if he took advantage of these resources, but they exist. Although I personally think that there are far too many annulments granted in today’s Church, I take issue with your implication that the Catholic Church treats the tragedy of broken marriages as lightly as every other institution today, religious or otherwise–hence my comment.

I haven’t really thought this through, but I have a few thoughts in reading your comments.

1. How important do you think doctrinal niceties and nuances are to children whose parents’ marriages are being destroyed with the full sanction and authority of the Roman Catholic Church? All they know is that they no longer have a family.

2. When the Church grants an annulment, it essentially says the marriage is invalid and never truly existed in the Church’s view. Thus, in the Church’s eyes, any children born of the sexual union between the non-husband and the non-wife is a bastard.

3. Whether it’s an annulment or a divorce, it still means the end of a marriage with all the attendant heartbreak, emotional pain, damage and destruction.

4. Annulment feeds the rationalization hamster. Annulment is shot through with moral force that divorce just doesn’t have. The wife can end her marriage with the full support, sanction and moral authority of her Church. This gives her the moral cover she needs to say not only that she wants out, but that God wants her out as well. And that forecloses all debate: “Thus spake GOD from ON HIGH. It is written; so it shall be!” And poof! The non-marriage is over.

5. I’m not too sure that the Roman Catholic Church’s canon law and its due process/appeal procedure is much consolation to children who no longer have an intact family and who are considered bastards in the Church’s eyes.

“I may be too quick to judge SCW, but as I mentioned on a previous comment she has all of the markings of an attention whore of the first order. She has not only created a public blog where she complains about how bad her husband is, but she does so under the moniker of Sexy Christian Wife. Translation: Beta Orbiter’s Wet Dream. Honestly, I can see no other way to read her. I simply can’t believe that a woman would write such things under such a name and not be desperate for sympathy and attention. I can’t take her seriously in whatever her claimed quest for knowledge and understanding might or might not be.”

Dalrock sticks the landing!

By the way, this could go for another, with only a little Alteration.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must engage in a smidge of white-knighting.

slwerner — She seems to me to be more confused about the idea’s represented in the Manosphere as opposed to being simply hostile to them. Perhaps she would be open to listening if we have the grace to treat her more respectfully

yeah that’s what they mindrape our boys with in school, too — you will Respect your betters, er, females, or face the consequences

perhaps your Prosecutor Wife should get signed arrest warrants for the Hostile Males who arent treating the little ladies with the respect due them?

after all, anyone pointing out the predator that the U.S. has become in respect to its male citizens is doubtless a “criminal” anyway, eh?

Your vitriol is misplaced and unnecessary. As it happens, I agree with what I understand to be your position on divorce among Christians and its effects on society–I merely wished to make a distinction between the Protestant position on divorce and the Catholic position. Your contention that the Church is corrupt because some of Her members misuse their authority is incorrect and illogical. It is tantamount to saying that because some senators accept bribes, the entire U.S. government is corrupt.

I respectfully disagree. It is more like saying that since many US senators accept bribes with impunity, that the US Senate is corrupt (I’m not saying this is true, just an example). Yes, I know that every Church in the land has a blurb on their website talking about how against divorce they are. I can’t read Spanish but I’d wager every Mexican border town police department has an official statement regarding their high ethical standards too. What I would say is if you aren’t aware of the corruption, that is a red flag. Imagine a cop from one of those notoriously corrupt police forces claiming earnestly that his is an honest force. Either he is so corrupt he doesn’t know what corruption is, or he is so corrupt he is covering for the corrupt system, or, perhaps he is just an unimaginable fool. I assume from your writings that you take the biblical stance on marriage and divorce entirely seriously. I also assume you feel how much this makes you stand out amongst atheists, Protestants and other Catholics given the actual divorce rates for all three groups.

What I will say is that many Catholics seem to get the issue right, at least in their words. From the stats I’ve seen Catholics have a divorce rate a few points lower than other Christians, so it is true that there is some difference. I also know of only one couple where a church’s potential judgment prevents an unhaaaaapy wife from frivolously divorcing, and that wife sticks around because her Catholic parents would disinherit her if she brought that shame on their good name.

Let me put it another way though. If the Church isn’t corrupt, there must be nothing to fix. Catholic marriages end in divorce at extremely high rates, yet you assure me there is nothing the Church could do differently. I don’t buy it, and the stories I hear about annulments being passed out as a form of “Catholic divorce” and stats on Catholic divorce rates bear my skepticism out. Before we can address the issue, we first have to break through all of the denial.

Ok. Sorry, let me restate that. The border town cops in Mexico take too many bribes and make too few arrests of members of organized crime, but their police forces aren’t corrupt.

If they are giving too many annulments, they must be giving annulments where there is no justification. Spin this how you like, I call it corrupt. The high (and close) Catholic divorce stats show that ordinary Catholics don’t fear church discipline much more than Protestants do.

Dalrock says:
March 12, 2012 at 3:03 pm
” Maybe she can come back under the moniker “Me f**** you long time wife” or “Me f*cky sucky good wife” and offer sincere questions about why her husband is so mean, and some pictures with a pouty face. Heck, I’ll even do a post in response to her then.”

Priceless.

I went hoping she had pictures posted of herself in lingerie so we could see she wasn’t lying. If that was considered soft porn, then a bathing suit is certainly puplic attire and therefore suitable. Alas it wasn’t so. We have to trust her that she is the vision of sexy. Let’s see, how much trust has a lecturing attention whore earn? Zero.

No, Dalrock. It’s not that I want to “pretend I didn’t send it.” It’s that if I wanted a public confrontation I would have confronted you publicly. Additionally, I had no way of knowing you even got it since you didn’t respond, except to do so publicly weeks later. I found that a strange way of responding is all.

The truth is that when I reveal the correspondence of an email, I tell the person I’m going to do so because I understand that if they wanted to say what they had to say publicly they would have commented rather than emailing me.

There is a difference between honoring the privacy of a polite discussion, and license to bitch people out expecting them to keep it to themselves so it won’t impact your reputation. Go read your own email again. There was nothing courteous about it, and it therefore didn’t deserve any courtesy in return. You didn’t challenge any points I made, you just accused me of being unfair in the “gender war” for my posts on Sheila. I didn’t bother to respond or comment at the time because I assumed you were embarrassed that you had hit send. I interpreted it a different way when Alte came in leading a posse clucking at Cl, and then I noticed that I was no longer on the TC blogroll. I don’t need the traffic, but I’ve tried to be kind to your blog/bloggers even though Alte has at times come here to chew me out (with follow on apologies). It is certainly possible that I made a connection which wasn’t correct, but at some point I stop offering the benefit of the doubt.

But really, I have no hard feelings. I just cannot figure out why SCW was attacked. It made no sense to me given that she did something so extraordinary in this culture, even among Christian women who can always find a pastor to give them a “get-out-of-marriage-free” card. Especially after multiple affairs.

She stayed and she’s working on it. The fact that she is attacked leaves me incredulous. I honestly don’t get it. Unless the consensus is that a woman is wrong no matter what, even when she clearly isn’t.

I’ve already shared what my own issues with Sexy Christian Wife and her comments here are. The assumption that if any woman is criticized one must hate all women is tedious.

A lot of women don’t really understand why men have affairs or what drives them to have what is essentially a relationship with a woman other than his wife. There is way more to it than sex and an ongoing affair speaks to a lack of emotional intimacy in the marriage.

It seems that the opposite of the conventional wisdom on why women and men cheat is true, that is, men have affairs because a mistress generally listens to him and doesn’t nag and control; women have affairs because their husbands are being too beta and they want a good rogering. Why else would a woman say “My husband is so nice. He’s a good guy. I just wish he would have an affair!”? And why else would a man have an ongoing relationship when he could more easily get no-strings sex, which is less risky from a getting caught point of view?

> …ordinary Catholics don’t fear church discipline much more than Protestants do.

That cannot be very surprising given that most people take their moral cues from what blinks by on their television sets. As an atheist who has kept his vows, at no small pain or sense of loss, I must advise my most esteemed US brothers, choose a wife for some other reason than that she fits well with your Jersey Shore image of yourself. And while you’re at it, read a book or seen every now and then. God knows it wouldn’t kill ya to use that lovely brain he gave you.

“Sounds like Mom was using the Police, as Dad. She wanted her son to go to school but he didn’t want to and he had become too much for her to handle. This is a sad example of people using and expecting government to raise their kids, but I do not blame the mother alone, it is the liberal social engineers who have been pushing the breakup of the nuclear family and the State raised child for over a generation.”

Stupid Women they complain that the loser drug addict alcoholic man is treating them like dirt but they wont leave or they get a really good dependable man that they are not happy with!!!
I have had so many friends who fit this scenario it is ridiculous.
I married a man who I thought was a good guy and found out with in days of our wedding that he was a binge alcoholic, lasted a few years any way then found a WONDERFUL dependable good man who loves me so very much and who I would never let go. He is the best thing that happened to me and my boys! there is no drug abuse, there is no porn, there is no cheating, there is no physical abuse and I am so very glad that we are still madly in love after 15 years together and looking forward to growing old together. I still have friends who are married to wonderful men who put them down and treat them totally disrespectfully. I tell them to get over it and realize what they have!!
Sometimes we never learn and sometimes we do.

A lot of women don’t really understand why men have affairs or what drives them to have what is essentially a relationship with a woman other than his wife. There is way more to it than sex and an ongoing affair speaks to a lack of emotional intimacy in the marriage.

I think there is much truth to this, but I also think we have to be very careful not to give men a pass to cheat. I’m not saying you are doing this but I do see this as a risk if we don’t spell it out. I also think some men are very prone to cheating (alphas) while most betas aren’t typically disposed that way. There is still the issue of women who marry alphas because they liked the preselection that came with his being predisposed to cheating and then complain about getting cheated on. These are separate though in the sense that the wife isn’t blameless for passing by nicer more loyal men to get the exciting alpha, and the alpha himself is still morally responsible for his own fidelity.

The men are cheating already which is why the wives think they have such good husbands. If the wife is not having sex with the husband and the husband is coming home from work happy as a clam- like he could care less about sex -then he is surely sleeping with someone else. Husbands are not happy without sex. I don’t care how much you want to believe that you are the only one. I think there are 2 women in just about every relationship today. The wife and the girlfriend.

I find your comment to dawn a bit offensive and abrasive. If a man chooses to marry a woman that already has children, he willingly accepts her and her progeny. They can become just as loved as if they were his biological children. The same circumstance occurs when a man adopts children in an infertile marriage.

This post is the story of my marriage. Nice guy, good job, but I was boring. My ex continually tried to bait me into doing something bad, but I never fell for it. Then she initiated the divorce. After sticking the knife and twisting it a few times, she said that still wanted to be friends. The “friends” thing was just an attempt to get an implicit acceptance that it “was nobody’s fault”. Not going to happen.

It is an entirely legitimate question to ask what a woman has brought into a marriage that is as valuable as comfort and security for HER sons.

Isn’t that up to the man marrying her to decide? He’s been married to her for 15 years so presumably she brings something he values. Cuckoldry, by the way, is when a man raises a child he thinks is his but isn’t, not when he raises kids he knows are not biologically his.

call out the carousel rider chumping the beta

Why assume every woman who has had sex with more than one man and then goes on to marry is a “carousel rider chumping a beta”? This gets a little tired when there’s nothing to go on but a short comment that doesn’t indicate one way or the other.

By mentioning your marriage you open it to public scrutiny. I don’t know What your background is, or what interest you two have in normalizing good men having to settle for used up single mothers and forcing them to raise thugspawn kid while having none of his own. Culturally, the poor idiot is a subject of pity by men and disdain by women. No man chooses to raise another mans child unless he has no other option. There is an entire social and economic movement, maybe you’ve heard of it, devoted to reducing a mans options to zero, the point where he has no choice but to take what he is given after the girl has had her fun and made her “mistakes” wink wink.

Because that’s the world we live in. Perhaps I should distinguish between a proper carousel rider, and a woman who happens to marry the first wooden horse (He seemed so real!) before saddling up some some plow animal, but what’s the point? A tingle-driven decision-making proces is the problem, whether it leads to the carousel, or divorce court. Funny, considering how this thread started that you would readily accept her posture as suffering, grieved wife forced to deal with an “abusive” husband.

Speaking of horses: Climb down off that one, will you? The weary sage act is ridiculous considering the ecology of the manosphere in general, and this blog in particular.

@ybm
There is plenty of time to critique a woman (if warranted). No need to rush. Women always reveal their nature and beliefs as they communicate more. After all, it is their nature! Let it play out for a bit before assuming the worst.

I’m much more interested in the responses to Dawn, than Dawn’s predicament (or blessing) itself. All the statistical wisdom went right out the window, and CL and 7Man assumed the modern churchian stance that Dalrock writes about quite effectively.

“I have seen this in women before, and only in women. It is a sight to behold.”

It never ceases to be shocking. What it comes down to I believe, is the conviction women have today that they will never face serious punishment for anything, and that people will accept their lies, no matter how blatant, rather than hold them accountable.

then found a WONDERFUL dependable good man who loves me so very much and who I would never let go. He is the best thing that happened to me and my boys! there is no drug abuse, there is no porn, there is no cheating, there is no physical abuse and I am so very glad that we are still madly in love after 15 years together and looking forward to growing old together.

Aside from a once and done marriage, what more would you look for? She sounds like the real deal to me.

I didn’t marry a beta to take care of me I married a MAN. It just happened that he didn’t have a strong desire to have children. And I didn’t take my boys away from my ex husband, we tried to get him to see the boys but he would do things to hurt them trying to get back at me, then he just left. Drugs became more important to him. I don’t get child support because he has had no part in raising them, these boys are now my husbands. My point in saying this is that while I do believe that women on the whole don’t appreciate good men there are still women out there that do.

I read these blogs because I agree with the mind set of most of the men, Some are too hurt by women to show the real man inside, and the anger is justified. I have seen with my own eyes the spew that women put forth. I was encouraged to do just that kind of thing with my ex.
I did push for child support for a while but it had gotten to be over a year and he didn’t see them and he had been in jail so many times, i just said forget it. I tried not to make it my current husbands problem and worked the first few years of our marriage, then he decided that I should be home for the boys and him. I married a very good man and I try my best to be the kind of woman that he is happy with. Got to go he wants my attention.

I am sorry I didn’t in any way want this to be about me, I just wanted to say that not all women are alike.
now what is it that can be done about this problem, I have been fighting against feminism and all the culture that has come with it for a while. What can we do?
The church has definitely compromised on the Biblical mandates about everything.
Media is just inundated with feminism.
Schools are all about empowering women and bringing down men.(I homeschool)
There needs to be something to change all of this, but I don’t think that anger alone will do it.
I have two young men who live at home and when they are ready to get out there in the world with women I don’t want them going through what some of you men have gone through.
What can we do?

I respectfully disagree. A woman who has regular sex with her husband honors the economic exchange of sorts that is necessary to a marriage: his fidelity for hers; her sexual charms for his support. It used to be part of the “contract” between husband and wife that she will have sex with him when he wants. In my view, barring genuine medical issues, a wife should be having sex with her husband regularly, or she isn’t holding up her end of the bargain.

Before Marriage 2.0 a husband could not rape his wife because they were considered “one flesh” and one cannot rape oneself. The wife was considered a kind of “property” belonging to a husband. Through marriage, she was considered to have given standing consent to sex with her husband.

Of course a wife can say “no, I don’t want to have sex with you” to her husband. If the marriage ibecomes so adversarial that she is accusing him of rape and regularly withholding sex, one has to wonder how much of a marriage is left, or how much of a marriage there ever really was.

“I have two young men who live at home and when they are ready to get out there in the world with women I don’t want them going through what some of you men have gone through.
What can we do?”

Bring your husband here. Have him learn game. Bring your sons here when they are old enough. Teach them Game. Tell them never to put up with abuse from a woman. Tell them never to let a woman take advantage of them. Tell them that women are the gatekeepers of sex, but they — your sons — are the gatekeepers of commitment. They decide to whom they will give their time, their money and their resources. They must choose wisely. They should seriously consider whether to marry at all in the current political and sexual climate.

Have them learn the slut tells. Have them read Dalrock’s excellent posts on “Interviewing a Prospective Wife”. Have them learn how men and women are different and how they view sexual attraction differently. Teach them that the constants of what women find attractive in men are confidence, dominance, and displays of power, authority and charisma.

Have them read The Misandry Bubble by TFH when they get older, for an excellent exposition of the social, economic, historical and political forces at work.

“Maybe she’s perfectly awful, but to assume she’s only in it for the whining?”

Was putting up a blog page named “The Affair” not your first hint? How about posting pictures of her family so everyone could know for sure who she was talking about? Yeah, the martyr (and hamster) runs deep in this one.

I have two young men who live at home and when they are ready to get out there in the world with women I don’t want them going through what some of you men have gone through.
What can we do?

Deti offered some great advice, as well as being kind enough to point to some of my previous posts. I think one of the hardest challenges is getting past the denial. It is everywhere and it is relentless. It is no small achievement to be able to break through even partially. You seem to have that pretty well covered; don’t undervalue that. You can help your sons immensely by helping them approach the issue with a clear head as Deti suggests. One other resource in that respect is Solomon II. He is from the pickup side of game (with all that comes with that), but his experiences with and insights into the kinds of women your sons need to be on the lookout for is quite good. It is crass and can be painful reading but the insight is there. Roissy/Heartiste would be another option along the same lines, but Solomon offers it a little less harshly (not much) and I would say more compact.

This question of yours is why it is so frustrating to me that so many would deny the issue. It isn’t just the destruction being unleashed on innocent fathers and their children, but how difficult this makes it to counsel young men interested in starting a family. Those of us who value marriage have an obligation to accept the difficult truth so we can then together (once there are enough of us) influence the change which is needed. The dismissal and denial coming from so many who consider themselves strong proponents of marriage is very troubling to me for this reason.

Of course a wife can say “no, I don’t want to have sex with you” to her husband. If the marriage ibecomes so adversarial that she is accusing him of rape and regularly withholding sex, one has to wonder how much of a marriage is left, or how much of a marriage there ever really was.

Careful, there. You’ve got the skeleton of a case for frivolous divorce.

@DawnThere needs to be something to change all of this, but I don’t think that anger alone will do it.

No, but it’s a good and necessary start.

I have two young men who live at home and when they are ready to get out there in the world with women I don’t want them going through what some of you men have gone through.

This is a good start, too.

Here’s the part of your initial story that I took umbrage to: I married a man who I thought was a good guy and found out with in days of our wedding that he was… Perhaps I jumped the gun a bit, but the implication is that you were tricked rather than had made a bad choice. This sort of trickery–by men–is rare. The binge drinking and genuine abusiveness is usually, inconveniently, on the surface. This is one of the things to teach your sons to look for in a woman: accountability.

Cane, a binge drinker can be sober for a long time. I knew he drank occasionally, but I hadn’t seen it and we didn’t go places where there was alcohol (no bars). I believe because of his kindness while sober I also overlooked somethings that I shouldn’t have. But having not seen him drunk before I thought it was all in my head. I didn’t believe in divorce and so I dealt with it for a long while, it wasn’t like I was dealing with this every day. He spent two years completely away from the stuff, then he went on a business trip and got drunk there. I still put up with it. I did things to try to help him without enabling him. He lost his job and even though I was pregnant I got a job to pay bills. One day I came home for lunch and told my oldest to clean his room before I got home, The ex picked up my son and through him on the ground and told him that he was lazy and that he better get that room cleaned. That was the end. I had put up with him treating me bad when he was drunk but I would not allow that with my children. My catholic mother in law saw some of his behavior for herself and told me to get the kids away from him.
I am not saying that I am totally innocent in everything, and maybe I had a lot more to do with things than I would like to think. I did go to counseling because I knew that I was part of the problem, realizing that there were things that I should have seen and done SO differently.

I mean no offense, and in the end it doesnt even matter, but I have yet to read a story that a divorce is not justified and that they guy is not a jerk. Maybe they are all 100% true. I cannot know. My point? Women…..hold women to account, because for those who may have a story that we could sympathize with, yours is ruined by the rationale of the masses.

Too many times I have seen the “follow your heart sweety” crap. Heck I even saw it written into greeting cards to a woman who was ditching a good husband, then she ends up canceling her divorce and the same friends are cozy with the guy telling him he has courage for sticking to his marriage.

The crap is everywhere. Women DO NOT I repeat DO NOT hold each other accountable, period, end of story dont even attempt to say otherwise lest you risk lying.

So, sorry for the bad times. Get busy advocating for truth and fairness AMONG WOMEN, they will toss you so fast you will wonder if you are a leper.

I hear about single moms and divorces now, I have no natural sympathy for the woman involved….none…..my reaction is perfectly normal once you swallow the red pill and see the world as it actually is.

Deti I couldn’t agree more!!!!!!
I think my youngest who is 17 has some sense to see these kinds of girls. My 20 year old who is High functioning Autism would not , I believe that he would jump into a relationship with any kind of girl ( as long as she looked like a girl). I used to tell them monsters look like regular people you can’t always tell. We need to get better about telling the difference.
Youngest doesn’t like: girls who dress sleazy- they are just giving it away
girls who are upity- “Girls are so much better than boys”
girls who where too much makeup- “look at me”
girls who want to compete with him “she just wants to be a man”
Help me to recognize them.
Remember these boys were homeschooled did not have a lot of exposure to females in general

So, sorry for the bad times. Get busy advocating for truth and fairness AMONG WOMEN, they will toss you so fast you will wonder if you are a leper.
Yes they will, I have lost friends for speaking out on behalf of men.
Also Empatologicaism, people do make mistakes, we should try to live with them but when they become a danger it is time to say ” Boy that was a MAJOR SCREW UP on my part” then hit the road

The people that seem to be the most enthused about counseling are all too often part of the industry. Rather like a dentist handing out caramels & jawbreaker candies for free. Groupthink is involved also – if “everyone else is doing it”, it must be a good idea.

Dawn, an observation from my eight year old son might also be of some use to yours: How can you tell when a girl you like is actually nice, girls are very good at hiding who they really are.

Observe, observe how they treat you, observe how they treat others, and listen to what they have to say, because they will talk a lot about themselves, all you have to do is listen. And, as Dalrock said, the hardest part is getting past the denial/programming they will be exposed to, so that they can accurately and objectively observe and evaluate what the girls do and say, to be honest about it to themselves and not give the girls a pass, make excuses for them or engage in wistful thinking. And to make sure that they’re using their big head to do all the thinking.

Spouses who turned their marriages around seldom reported that counseling played a key role. When husbands behaved badly, value-neutral counseling was not reported by any spouse to be helpful. Instead wives in these marriages appeared to seek outside help from others to pressure the husband to change his behavior. Men displayed a strong preference for religious counselors over secular counselors, in part because they believed these counselors would not encourage divorce.

1. She talks openly about sex and her past partners. Or conversely, she is defensive about her past and refuses to talk about it. She lies about her past sex partner count (in my experience, nearly all women lie about this).

2. She dresses in public with tight or revealing clothing, esp, showing a lot of cleavage. She consistently dresses in a manner calculated to attract male attention.

3. She tells you about all the places she’s traveled. (“Well-traveled” for a woman really means “I went to lots of different places, and along the way I slept with a lot of men I didn’t know very well. I slept with them on vacations and trips because I knew I’d never see them again and wouldn’t have to deal with them or the reputation I might get.)

4. She has that “hard” look about her, a look that says “high mileage”, to put it crassly. Look for signs of premature aging: premature wrinkles or gray hair; pallid, grayish skin tone; perpetually dilated pupils; glassy eyes; premature crows feet; wrinkles on neck or decolletage. (Particularly look for this on a woman who hasn’t reached age 30.) This shows the toll hard partying takes on a woman’s body. These are signs of heavy drinking, heavy smoking, pulling all nighters, a diet laden with junk food, and/or possible illegal drug use.

1. The Carousel Rider. (The “carousel”, aka the “alpha c*ck carousel or the “c*ck carousel” describes a phenomenon in which women actively seek out and have sex with the alpha males in a community. This is a creation of the current sexual marketplace and resulted from completely unrestrained female sexual conduct. It inevitably leads to a situation in which anywhere from 30% to 80% of the women are sleeping with at most the top 20% of the men. These women are sharing the top men for sex. Each “gets a chance to ride all the horses on the carousel”, hence the name and imagery.)

The carousel rider has a high sex partner count from years of carousel riding but now wants to “settle down” with a “nice guy who will treat me right” because she’s “not like that anymore”. She’s around age 30, never married, and essentially wants off the carousel or got kicked off because she’s too old or no longer attractive enough.

2. The attention whore: She’s the stereotypical party girl. She’s loud, aggressive and drinks a lot. She dances on tables at the bar. Her Facebook page has hundreds of pictures and she is in nearly every one of them, usually holding a drink or making the “duckface” pose.

3. The status whore: She is obsessed with her status and that of others. She name drops famous or notorious people she has met, she knows, her friends know, or whom she has worked with. Owns expensive clothes, shoes or accessories and will tell anyone who will listen where she bought them and how much she (or her dad or a previous BF) paid for them. The quintessential status whore accessories: Manolo Blahnik shoes. The designer handbag, esp. Louis Vuitton or Gucci.

4. The entitlement princess: Very common female subtype. Accustomed to special treatment wherever she is. Makes increasingly heavy demands on her boyfriend’s time and money. Demands expensive and elaborate nights out including drinks, dinners, entertainment; then escalating to all-expense-paid vacations. Withholds sex when deprived of what she believes is her just due.

5. Batshit crazy: She has a diagnosable mental disorder, usually depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality or sociopathy. She might also have one or more addictions. She hooks the man through rapid sexual escalation and universal sexual availability. Wildly unpredictable, sexually aggressive and susceptible to extreme mood swings — from loving and gift-giving to physical violence. This type must be avoided at all cost.

6. Special snowflake: There’s no one like her. She’s different and not like those other girls. Other girls are sluts and bitches; but she is kind and pure as the driven snow. Sure, she slept around, but she’s better because she didn’t do that as much, or with scummy guys, or have one night stands. Besides, she was just being true to herself.

7. Needy clingy: Starts out with rapid sexual escalation and all seems well. A few weeks or months in, her personality shifts from cheerful and kind to dark and insecure. She wants her BF’s constant attention. Anything less brings anger, constant phone calls, and accusations of cheating. She has few friends.

8. Career first girls: She’s a member of the feminist sisterhood. She’s working hard to break that glass ceiling — not just for herself, but for the sisterhood and all of humanity. A husband, children, and a family life will always come second to the job.

9. Single/divorced moms (sorry Dawn, have to include this): She hates her ex husband and is constantly fighting with him over visitation, alimony and child support. Her children are poorly behaved and insolent. She has a lot of financial problems. She is usually desperate for a man to rescue her. She might even entrap her BF by getting pregnant by him (or another man).

I’m pretty suspicions of people who hear “God” speaking personally to them.

Indeed. Unless, of course, He’s telling them something that they desperately DON’T want to hear. If that’s the case, and it’s consistent with scripture, I tend to believe it. Because it’s happened to me.

You will not discern anything much by the way someone dresses or acts “uppity” and so forth. These obvious tells have been adapted and adopted, morphed into the cacophony of diaspora.

Hell I dont even know what cacophony of diaspora means but as a writing Rorschach it made me think of Aardvarks.

Anyway

Seriously, yea thats all good to watch for those overt signs, and that kids are homes schooled (so are mine) and all that…I agree. It will not help very much. They must willfully swallow the red pill. And no offense to moms, but a man has to feed it to them, because he will do it with an edge, with vim and verve and it will be taken on board by sons because of its hopefully grave presentation, as opposed to the well intended warnings from mom, which like I say are nice and sweet, but will not prepare them at all for the truth, because its the rarest woman who actually has a pair of those glasses on that lets them bust in and say “Im here to chew gum and kick ass”

God speaking personally is fine, as per conviction etc. Its not fine when its as if he is a personal GPS and life coach, sorry, I just don’t buy it, nor is basis for it found in scripture. I would also suggest that women are far more susceptible to misleading themselves on that because women live in their heads so much. If I stayed 24/7 in a swirling maelstrom of unreconciled thoughts and emotions I may hear all sorts of voices, anything to calm my mind down for a moment. Women are notoriously indecisive, hence OCD about decisions, even small ones. One tool for dealing with that is simply to imagine God said X…..I mean how can you OCD about that, right? He told you, so its gotta be OK.

7. Obsessed with the sexual double standard. She says things like
–“Hmmpf. If a man sleeps with lots of girls, he’s a stud. But if a woman sleeps with lots of men, she’s a slut. That’s so unfair.”
–“Well, YOU slept with a lot of girls, so YOU can’t judge ME for sleeping with a lot of guys.”

8. Uncomfortable judging bad behavior in women. Says things like:
–“How dare you judge me or any woman for sleeping with a lot of men! Remove that beam from your own eye before you try removing that speck from mine!”
–“She has to be true to herself.”
–“Sure she might have slept with lots of men. But
1. her father was probably a drunk/nonexistent/absent/working too much/gone too much/mean to her
2. everyone else was doing it too
3. no one told her she shouldn’t
4. she was drunk/high/with her friends/on vacation
5. it was only a blow job with that one guy

see, these things cannot be gleaned from appearances. That’s why conventional wisdom is gone. With women generally not thinking in the abstract as much, they will advise young men to watch for overt visible characteristic tells, like slutty dress or uppity dress, etc. But these MUCH deeper things can exist in the slutty dressed or the pentacostal dressed, etc etc.

Its very very difficult, even men with red pill ears can miss them from time to time. Ive spent LOTS of time with my 19 and 15 boys, I started by reviewing sermons with them after church to show the self effacement and white knight BS, they got so good at spotting it they would catch things I missed, like a contest.

My oldest then gets this serious GF. She was beautiful, hilarious, smart….a bit boisterous, but I am sure the type that most parents (including my wife) would be gung ho, treat her good, a keeper, etc.
Fast fwd about a year, and one day he seems down. What heppend? he said he broke it off. Why? See some things on the list above, she was a virgin and still is, it wasnt that, but she was a controlling bully in sheeps clothing. He saw it, jettisoned it, and says no mo…..good on ’em

1. She broaches the subject of sex first.
2. She’s into kinky sex.
3. She’s neurotic and disagreeable.
4. She is highly emotional and thrill-seeking.
5. She asks her man how many women he slept with or accuses him of being a player.
6. She has a lot of slutty friends.
7. She always seems to be with a man, never is without a man longer than a week.
8. She cannot seem to make a relationship work.
9. She never stops the fitness tests.
10. She seems really sexually experienced.

these things cannot be gleaned from appearances. That’s why conventional wisdom is gone. With women generally not thinking in the abstract as much, they will advise young men to watch for overt visible characteristic tells, like slutty dress or uppity dress, etc. But these MUCH deeper things can exist in the slutty dressed or the pentacostal dressed, etc etc.

No disagreement here, although I do think that Deti is offering more than just superficial insight. I tried to tackle this same challenge with my interview questions. I also think Solomon II is valuable for the same reason. He has stared into the abyss. Others can benefit from what he learned without having to go his route. It allows for a sort of “virtual” staring into the abyss, over his shoulder. But either way the challenge is real. All we can do is acknowledge this and offer the best tools we know to overcome it.

One thing I would add for Dawn is something I already think she has a handle on, but it is worth noting anyway. There may be a temptation to avoid judging women who made the same mistakes she did, especially if she hasn’t come to terms with her own responsibility for the choices she made. However, sometimes this works the other way, and they are the harshest judges of BS from others because they have already been brutally honest with themselves.

And I have neices and grand daughters who will need a list of tells for manwhores or cads… which I am sure the Ladies could write in five minutes.

That one is easy: You have an instant attraction to and connection with him. He is the man of your dreams and you fall madly in love with him. It seems like he knows you better than yourself. He is the man all of the romcoms, romance novels, and other chick crack tells you will one day sweep you off your feet. All of your girlfriends are jealous.

I stayed out of your discussion for a while and I am glad I did. The facts have cleared up and there was no need to comment.

I have 1 son. He started college. It’s only in the last year or so I learned of and have been warning him about women and marriage. He doesn’t talk much, as I don’t either, so I’m not sure if i’m getting thru to him.

Either way, good luck with your sons. Treacherous times are ahead for them and all boys and men.

This is the first one that i commented on and didn’t get treated like i am an enemy.

Word to the wise: You weren’t treated like an enemy because you didn’t come in here making tedious arguments such as “not all women are like that”. You also did not complain that “you all just hate women” when the public contents of your public blog are examined through the truth-seeking lenses we’ve learned to use.

I find it refreshing that Dawn actually has an interest in preparing her sons for the real world. My very own single-mother couldn’t have fattened me up for the slaughter any better. Think of all the good advice Dawn is getting here – and reverse that. The fact that I survived to later take the red pill had to be God’s will because I sure as hell didn’t get here thru any parental preparation. I will hold on to the hope (or illusion) that my beta upbringing was due more to ignorance then malice.

@empathy:
“Hell I dont even know what cacophony of diaspora means but as a writing Rorschach it made me think of Aardvarks.”
Thats some funny crap right there. I think we are very idealogically similar, but you are very eloquent in conveying your ideas. (As are Dalrock and others are here.) My lack of confident writing is probably why I lurk here so much without posting.

As far as hearing God’s voice, some thoughts:
1) God is not the only one who can talk and quote scripture.
2) If the voice only tells you what you want to hear, It’s not God.
3) If the voice ever goes against scripture, it’s not God.
4) If the voice suggest treating others with anything but love, it’s not God.
5) If the voice never convicts you of sin, it’s not God.
6) If this voice in your head doesn’t cause you to immediately drop to your knees, it is probably not the voice of God. Every scriptural reference of heavenly beings talking to mortals resulted in fear, worship, awe, trembling, etc… If it’s not God, who is it? I have never personally heard the ‘voice’ of God, or Jesus, or an angel. There is the gentle prodding of the Holy Spirit and there is the Word as layed out in scripture. Those are the only communications from the Father I’ve ever received or ever needed. However, without a doubt, the ‘father of lies’ has whispered gently in my ear. I have heard his voice, and inside my head it sounds eerily like my own. I hold anyone who claims to follow a voice in their head as suspect.

Back to the original topic. That story could have been written by my ex-wife. She even told me as much. After a year of separation with me doing all the weak beta crap to try to salvage our 8 year marriage, it was over. She even had the gall to tell me that. “This would have been so much easier if I could hate you, I wish you’d had an affair.” I guess she would have preferred hate to apathy.

Thank you for the compliment on the humor. Id rather be funny than eloquent.

I agree w/ the list of things about Gods voice. Gods voice is NOT a trivial thing, and it bugs the dog outta me when I hear it use flippantly by Christians, “the Lord told me this and that”…..drives me crazy, and its usually down out of what Ive coined “evangelical arrogance”, if its a man doing it, and piety of a woman.

These men who do it are generally gravelly sorts who seem very very spiritual, always inserting things into conversations, like if Id say well, thanks to my boss I have a 3 day weekend, they chime in…..no….thank the Lord!….you know the ones I mean, they are extra spiritual, but have no relational value to anyone w/ a human connection. They are so set apart its like negative charisma.

If they are giving too many annulments, they must be giving annulments where there is no justification. Spin this how you like, I call it corrupt. The high (and close) Catholic divorce stats show that ordinary Catholics don’t fear church discipline much more than Protestants do.

As a practical matter in the US this is true. The US, which has only ~5% of the world’s total Catholic population, accounts for an astounding percentage (~80%) of the total number of global annulments granted by the Catholic Church: http://www.canonlaw.info/a_annulments.htm#17 (the remainder of that article is mostly an entertaining rationalization about why this ought not be considered an issue). In the US, you can basically get an annulment if you want one and are willing to go through the process (which can be a PITA because the tribunal dissects your marriage a bit).

There are also many Catholics who get divorced and don’t other to get an annulment either because they do not wish to remarry (an annulment basically frees you to marry again in the Church), or, if they do, simply marry outside the Catholic Church. These people are not supposed to receive communion in the Catholic Church, but many still do anyway. The main area where it can become an issue regards children and their sacraments, but in my experience these are pretty much never “blocked” in these situations, although the parents who are violating the rules may be looking at uncomfortable discussions with the priest. So the annulment figures don’t necessarily pick up all these people — lots of divorced Catholics don’t bother to get one unless they want to be remarried in the Church.

As a practical matter, therefore, the discipline isn’t “feared”, because there’s nothing much to fear. You’re not going to be kicked out for being divorced. You won’t be able to be remarried in the Church without an annulment — which you can get if you are willing to go through the process and exhume the bodies from your marriage before a tribunal of priests. Or you can skip the whole thing, get married again civilly (or in another denomination) and just get on with things, which is what a goodly number do as well. In practice, it’s the same as any other denomination in this aspect, it is merely the words and the theological theorizing behind it which differs — and that has no practical impact on the divorce rate among Catholics, which tracks the averages pretty closely.

@ Dawn
I also think that this anti-slut, anti-feminist training can be powerful coming from a mother. It depends on the relationship you have with your sons. If they think you’re just being a stereotypical overprotective mom, then no. If they can view it as getting insider information from the ‘enemy’ camp, they may take heed. Either way, it will always be less about what you tell them and more about how you live. If you truly live out your values in day to day life with your husband, your sons will see it. If you are a good wife, and the household is stable – you will become the model of what a good wife is to your sons. This is more powerful then anything you can tell them. I’ll state that again for emphasis: BE the model of a good wife. I think most boys in that situation will be able to discern the desireable qualities. Your husband should assume the role of warning them about what to avoid.

1. God is perfect. Man is fallen and imperfect.
2. God makes the laws. Man does not.
3. In marriage, absolute fidelity is expected.
4. SCW is to be commended for staying with her husband through not one, but two affairs with the same woman. (Say what you will about SCW. Staying with a spouse through not one, but two episodes of infidelity is way, WAY too much to ask. She has herculean faith.)

Here’s where I take issue with Alte:

1. SCW is not above criticism merely because she stays with her unfaithful husband. Perhaps her public blog, available for public consumption, reveals motives for doing so. CL and others shouldn’t be criticized merely for examining that public blog to determine those motives, whatever they may be.
2. SCW came in here saying “NAWALT” to the topic. CL and 7Man offered criticism. Alte dragged her personal issues with CL and 7Man into this, in an obvious ad hominem intended to detract from their credibiliity.
3. Alte came in here, brandishing the long knives and slashing away. Then when Eumaios piped up, she bleats “DHMIAG” and scolds Dalrock for not climbing atop his trusty steed and riding to her rescue. If you’re going to come in here slinging arrows, perhaps you ought to expect arrows to be slung back.
4. Alte is a very, very intelligent woman and can more than hold her own in a debate. I find it a bit odd that she scolds a man for not saving her from…..harsh rhetoric.

My lack of confident writing is probably why I lurk here so much without posting.

I like your comments. (I also chuckled at empath’s humour). This, for the win:

However, without a doubt, the ‘father of lies’ has whispered gently in my ear. I have heard his voice, and inside my head it sounds eerily like my own. I hold anyone who claims to follow a voice in their head as suspect.

None of what i said was meant to address the emotional effects of divorce or annulment on any member of a broken family, because I am not interested in addressing that subject–I am primarily interested in defending the Church from the charge of corruption. How the people involved feel about an annulment does not change the truth of the situation, which needs to be addressed. And the children remain legitimate, as they are the product of a “putative” marriage: i.e., a marriage that was thought by one at least of the parties to be valid. I definitely agree, however, that the incorrect declaration of an annulment allows the woman seeking it to soothe her guilty conscience.

@Dalrock:

I think I understand the source of our disagreement, which rises from a misunderstanding most non-Catholics have about the Church: non-Catholics (and poorly-taught Catholics) see the Church as a merely human institution, characterized by the immediately observable, current behavior of the Church’s members. My comparison of the Church with the U.S. government may have added to this confusion, but I had a difficult time finding a better analogy, since, really, there’s nothing else like the Church on earth.

In contrast, the Catholic Church’s teaching is that the Church is not merely Her currently living human members, nor is She the product of their actions, however sinful or virtuous. The Roman Catholic Church is the pure white Bride of Christ, sinless and unsinning, eternal and unchanging, a society both natural (composed of Her members now living) and supernatural (composed of Her members in the hereafter), and guided by the Holy Spirit. Thus, when you speak of “the Church,” you seem to mean “her leaders and members alive now,” but I mean that and all of the above. The Church has always had great sinners among her members, from popes to the lowliest laymen–those who have abused Her doctrines and misapplied Her laws–the “corrupt”. Nevertheless, the Church Herself, in Her essence, is not and cannot be corrupt–because She is not a human institution. You may certainly declare your disbelief in the truth of this assertion, but you cannot declare that this is not what the Church teaches. Perhaps you see now why, believing as I do, I must dispute your statement “the Church is corrupt.”

if you had said, “Face it, the majority of the Church’s hierarchy, at least in America, is corrupt,” I would have had a hard time disagreeing with you. I hope I am not blind to the spineless and faithless bishops who have allowed every sort of immorality among their flock merely out of fear for the world’s opinion. A sickeningly large portion of Catholics in the world today are scarcely aware of their faith and its practice. In fact, given Pelosi, Sebelius, Biden, et al., we Catholics are often at the forefront of the liberal movement that is destroying society in general. I do indeed think there is “much to fix.”

I do not think, however, that one of the things that needs fixing is the Church’s doctrine on marriage, including the provision for annulments. Annulments are merely the logical extension of the Church’s understanding of marriage: if there is a valid sacrament for marriage, there must be a way of recognizing when that sacrament is invalid or non-existent. The annulment in and of itself is not immoral–it is only immoral when it is abused, either by “corrupt” clergy or faithless selfish laymen. So yes, in the former respect I do not think the Church should change anything, but in the latter I do. I think the practice of interdict or excommunication needs to be much more frequently exercised; I think the hierarchy needs to stand their ground again fearlessly, regardless of how many people leave the Church as a result; and I think the harshest disciplinary actions are too good for people who transgress unrepentantly against the Church’s edicts.

Sorry to carry on so long, but I can’t resist waxing rhetorical when the truth of my Church is at issue.

“And I have neices and grand daughters who will need a list of tells for manwhores or cads… which I am sure the Ladies could write in five minutes.”

I’m not a lady but I’ll give it a shot. Keep in mind this is just based on my observations.

1. You’ve met him at a bar. He’s been chatting you up for quite a while. He doesn’t seem the slightest bit nervous. He’s almost too confident. He number closes you. You watch him walk to another area of the bar and does the same thing with another girl you’ve never seen before.

2. He isn’t at all nervous when talking to you for the first few times.

3. He pushes hard for P in V sex the first time he gets you alone.

4. He doesn’t necessarily push for the same night lay, but he does push for sex very soon.

5. You’ve heard from other girls that he pumped and dumped them.

6. He has a crappy job and is always broke. He mistreats and uses everyone around him. But somehow he can always get women. (This is the number one cad/manwhore tell, as far as I can see.)

7. He purposely keeps details about himself shrouded in mystery, even after you’ve been seeing him for a month or so. He doesn’t talk about what he does or where he is when he is not with you.

8. After you sleep with him, he ditches you — calls and texts go unreturned. (You’ve just been pumped and dumped.)

9. After you rebuff his advances, either (1) calls and texts are unreturned, or (2) there seems to be a systematic way he returns calls and texts, with increasing durations between a call/text and its return.

Adding to Deti’s list of slut tells: extreme defensiveness about her partner count. Call me cynical or bitter or any other name, I don’t have a problem accepting the fact that women won’t tell the truth about the number of men they’ve had sex with “before”. But a woman who jumps down your throat at the merest mention of previous partners is very likely hiding something, and that something is probably not her virginity.

There’s sound data indicating the probability of divorce in 10 years or less correlates with partner count prior to marriage. I do not have the URL for Slumlord’s article on this but can get it if needed.

Dalrock, the point being that many traditional conservative men will excuse all manner of bad behaviors in women. Thus young men should be quite careful of any advice given to them by such men, as it could be exactly the opposite of truth, of reality, or of what will be good for those young men.

The church is corrupt because they don’t practice what they preach and if they do practice what they preach, they are preaching the wrong thing. For any woman to come out of church to spew anything else but submission to their husband first is getting preached the wrong message.
Defending the catholic church is like that the teachers of the law defending their laws against Jesus when he tells them that they make laws and weigh people down, yet don’t follow them themselves and doing their best to uphold the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law/what it really means.

“Dalrock, the point being that many traditional conservative men will excuse all manner of bad behaviors in women. Thus young men should be quite careful of any advice given to them by such men, as it could be exactly the opposite of truth, of reality, or of what will be good for those young men.”

I think young men generally should not take advice on dating and women from:

I’m not a lady but I’ll give it a shot. Keep in mind this is just based on my observations.

I don’t think your cad list is as useful because you’ve approached it as a man.

1) Dalrock’s one line goes right to the heart of her feelings; it’s more intuitive.

2) Women are fundamentally impervious to checklists. A woman’s mental checklist is long (pro and con) not because it’s useful, but to make it useless. The worse the relationship (whether because he’s a bad boy, or because she’s a slut) the longer the list will be, because more justification noise is required to drown out the crying. The real list is only one point long, and there’s only two varieties.

A) I want to.

B) I don’t want to be alone.

When Cad comes along and she likes him, even if he ticks off a perfect 9 for 9 on the bad boy list, she’ll just turn it into a 99 point list. See? He’s not so bad!

Dalrock, the point being that many traditional conservative men will excuse all manner of bad behaviors in women. Thus young men should be quite careful of any advice given to them by such men, as it could be exactly the opposite of truth, of reality, or of what will be good for those young men.

I made a list of observable phenomena, and drew logical conclusions from it.

Dalrock throws out a one-paragraph blurb not about what actually happens, but about her FEELINGS about what she BELIEVES happened.

Of course. How could I be so short sighted? I’ve seen my own daughter come home from school humming like a tuning fork about how awesomely awesome her new crush/flavor of the month is. I ask her to describe him. What she tells me is how she FEELS.

May I comment on the cad list?
Telling you that you are the perfect woman
Telling you you look sex as soon as you meet
showing off to his friends
sticking his tongue down your throat on the first date
Parking somewhere on the way to dinner just to talk
then getting mad because you didn’t let him do ANYTHING

And Cane is right, we don’t see it until we have been hurt. A girl really needs Dad to be there to check a guy out and she needs to abide by his wishes regarding said guy. Dad will usually be able to tell if he is a cad

if you had said, “Face it, the majority of the Church’s hierarchy, at least in America, is corrupt,” I would have had a hard time disagreeing with you.

Yes, then we are in fundamental agreement. It isn’t my intention to challenge the Catholic Church in the larger sense (in its entirety across time). I mean it from a practical point of view, here and now. Brendan was kind enough to weigh in with the astonishing stats. The US has 6% of Catholics WW and receives 79% of annulments. For me here is the US, although I tend to extrapolate to the larger western world (rightly or wrongly). My readership is also primarily in the US.

My other point was that when corruption becomes commonplace the honest tend to very much stand out (both laity and leadership). It becomes very difficult not to just go along with the flow. Because of this, I assumed that the honest ones understood that I wasn’t lumping them in with the dishonest, because they must of course already know how much they stand out.

Sorry to carry on so long, but I can’t resist waxing rhetorical when the truth of my Church is at issue.

No apology is in order. I was short with you yesterday and you responded with grace today. I apologize for the former and thank you for the latter

Hey, I’m offended by that, who’s playing? Look, I never claimed to be, nor represented myself as, a towering intellect. I’m arguing practicality, here. I managed to marry well, I’m reasonably good at it, I do have some pride in that, but my complaint is it seems we’re awfully absorbed in semantics and divining meaning and maintaining grudges rather than any fruitful instruction – and, I confess to doing this myself after having been reminded that it doesn’t serve – using the bad behavior of others to excuse our own? That’s crap, no matter who does it. She did/he did/she did 2.0/he did 3.0 – those might be facts, but they’re not honest evidence of any crime. How are artificial wombs any different than fish and bicycles? You can’t sin your way out of sin.

and throwing in some gay shaming

No, no – I’m specifically into anal sex shaming, regardless of the participants, and shaming the notion that there’s such a thing as “gay marriage”. There ain’t. Gays have nothing to be ashamed of simply because of their ssa. I was being snippy and thereby obfuscated my point, sorry.

You are the bitch here.

I’m not necessarily prepared to refute that. Just don’t call me late for supper.

lol, Legion – asshole/bitch = trad Cath mating call.

Yeah, you’re Team Women alright.

Nu-huh. I’m Team Eye Roll though.

A lot of women don’t really understand why men have affairs or what drives them to have what is essentially a relationship with a woman other than his wife. There is way more to it than sex and an ongoing affair speaks to a lack of emotional intimacy in the marriage.

“And we are talking about women here, so here comes the ‘guilt.’ Women have guilt covered — and these women are no different. They feel guilty as all get out and wonder about what everyone else will think should they decide to leave this ‘nice’ guy. They wonder about the impact it will have on their kids, their extended families, their circle of friends. Deep inside they feel selfish and ask, ‘What gives me the right to leave my husband when he has done nothing wrong?’”

Anonymous Coward:

“To be fair to the author of the HuffPost article, she does seem to have her doubts as to the would be-divorcees’ motives:

‘”‘Really? You wish your husband would go out and have sex with another woman because then you would be justified in wanting to leave him?'”

Darlrock:

“True. She wrote that immediately following the part where she portrays women as martyrs for feeling guilty for doing evil.”

But does she actually do that? According to you, she is saying that, in the paragraph about the guilt women feel. You say:

“Yes, you read that right. Women are victims for feeling guilty about wreaking massive devastation on the innocent, for profiting from their own family’s pain and her own unwillingness to keep her promise. What they need is a patsy, a rube. They need someone else to volunteer to take the fall for the terrible crime they plan on committing. There is only one choice; their husband must be the one to play the patsy.”

But I’m not sure where you are getting that. The whole rest of the article, from the end of the paragraph about guilt, is as follows:

“Really? You wish your husband would go out and have sex with another woman because then you would be justified in wanting to leave him? Really? You wish your husband would go out and have sex with another woman because then you would be justified in wanting to leave him? If you think about it, there are so many things wrong with that whole series of events. Would you ever imagine when you took your wedding vows that you would one day find yourself hoping your husband would cheat on you? Seriously?

“I am not purporting to have the answer on this one. There are certainly some heated viewpoints on both sides of this debate.

“One viewpoint is, ‘Suck it up, you made a vow, you made a commitment, stay married for the sake of the kids, doesn’t ‘until death do us part’ count for anything?’

“Another viewpoint is, ‘You only live once, people change, you shouldn’t have to live unhappy and unfulfilled, the kids need to see what a happy, fulfilled marriage/partnership looks like.’

“And, of course, other opinions abound. What is your opinion? I know you have one and I would love to hear it!”

As I read it, she NEVER says that women are “victims” or “martyrs.” Nor does she say anything at all about finding a patsy or a rube.

The paragraph you quoted does present the stereotypical, and self serving, notion that women “always” feel guilt. But it doesn’t exactly say that they shouldn’t, in this situation. It says that they wonder about the impact on others, including the kids. And it finishes by saying that deep inside they feel selfish, and question what they are doing. It nowhere says, or even implies, that they are victims or martyrs. If anything, it seems to suggest, as I read it, that they SHOULD feel guilt in this situation.

Nor does the rest of the article provide any support for your notion that the author feels such women are victims and martyrs. The longish paragraph quoted in part by Anonymous Coward, which follows the paragraph about “guilt,” seems, to me anyway, to strongly suggest the opposite. The next paragraph just says that she is not taking sides. The following two paragraphs very briefly state both “sides” of the issue. And the last paragraph merely asks the readers for their opinions.

So where is the author excusing these women? Let alone describing them as victims or martyrs? And where does this author say anything at all about the need for a patsy?

Dalrock: understood. Due to work and other things I’m in a very literal-minded mode at the moment.

Concur on the cad/player tell. Unhappily by the time a woman is 18 it is a bit late to start teaching her how to control her emotional impulses, let alone her sexual ones. Self restraint isn’t particularly prized in this society, so fathers with daughters are swimming against the tide when they try to teach them self control, checking their impulses against their ethical training, and so forth. That doesn’t mean it is impossible, just more difficult.

I’m reminded of something a relative once told me regarding “real deals” in the financial world: “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is”. Seems to me that young women need to learn the same thing about men. Certainly young men need to learn that about women. And not so young men…

As I read it, she NEVER says that women are “victims” or “martyrs.” Nor does she say anything at all about finding a patsy or a rube.

She puts guilt in scare quotes, and talks about how women feel it because “Women have guilt covered — and these women are no different.” Then as you say she says she isn’t taking sides on this immoral act. She says maybe they should feel guilt, maybe they shouldn’t. This just after she suggests that if they do feel guilty it is because women are predisposed to feel guilt whether it is warranted or not. To not take sides is to give it cover. Were she writing about murder, I suspect you could see this.

As for the rubes, you are confusing my own assertion for me summarizing her. You are overlooking my framing:

While the author is baffled by the fact that so many of these women wish their husbands would have an affair, the reason is quite obvious if you consider the situation from the would be frivolous divorcées perspective.

This is the context where I wrote that the wife needs a rube, a patsy. It would be quite boring if all I ever did was summarize someone else’ article.

Yeah, I’ve seen this in women – and a few men. Not just wishing, but doing things to make it happen – or at least to make it easy for it to happen. I’ve also seen men and women try to get their spouse to act over the top angry or crazy, so they have an excuse for the divorce they want. Then there is trying to be so horrible at home that your spouse files just to get away from you.

CL and others shouldn’t be criticized merely for examining that public blog to determine those motives, whatever they may be.

Deti, I’m going to borrow both your example and your own thoughtful words, and agree with you as kindly and empathetically as I can.

CL is unqualified to speak on successful marriage, as she’s divorced. It’s like a nun speaking to her vows once she’s set them aside. She is no longer in authority on the matter. Its why, while I don’t necessarily believe SCW is correct, theologically speaking, a group of marriage-impaired advisors aren’t necessarily the competent voice for preserving marriage. Yes, there’s certainly a good measure of “don’t do what I did” – but it almost always boils down to “it was done to me”. If we’re reluctant to indulge victimhood, shouldn’t it be across board?

Then if Dalrock had a fight with his wife at any time during their marriage, he is not qualified to speak on “successful” marriage.

Then no Roman Catholic priest is qualified to speak on successful marriage, having themselves never been married. Then Jesus Christ Himself is not qualified to speak on successful marriage, having never Himself been married during His earthly life, and despite the Bible’s recordation of His speaking on marriage and those words being considered the very Words of God.

We can do this all day, Velvet. This is silly.

What you should examine is: Is the criticism valid, regardless of the qualifications of the individual offering the criticism?

“She puts guilt in scare quotes, and talks about how women feel it because ‘Women have guilt covered — and these women are no different.'”

Yes, as I said, she does present that self serving view of women (ie that “always” feel guilt, presumably, even when they shouldn’t). But it seems to me that she pretty clearly indicates that they have good reason to feel guiit in this particular situation. Not only in that paragraph (when she summarizes what women feel), but in the later one as well (the one with the “Seriously”s and “Reallys?”). Nowhere does she say that they shouldn’t feel guilt. And she only very briefly, and with an explicit disclaimer that it is only one side of the debate, mentions the view that they shouldn’t.

“Then as you say she says she isn’t taking sides on this immoral act. She says maybe they should feel guilt, maybe they shouldn’t. This just after she suggests that if they do feel guilty it is because women are predisposed to feel guilt whether it is warranted or not.”

I think you are making more of the predisposition claim than she is. But, yes, she isn’t taking sides. But, still, that’s a far cry from claiming that the women are “victims” or “martyrs.”

“To not take sides is to give it cover. Were she writing about murder, I suspect you could see this.”

Bah. The clearer the moral case, the more obvious, and objectionable, the “cover.” I know you are a Christian, but not everyone is, Not everyone takes an oath “before God.” And everyone who married over the last forty to fifty years did so knowing they were doing so in a no fault divorce environment. Which means that they married knowing their spouse could divorce them for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all. Given all of that (and the other obvious distinctions) what reasons are “good enough” for divorce is surely a closer and more nuanced moral issue than murder (which is, by definition, both immoral and illegal).

“….This is the context where I wrote that the wife needs a rube, a patsy.”

That’s not how I read the paragraph of yours that I quoted:

“Yes, you read that right. Women are victims for feeling guilty about wreaking massive devastation on the innocent, for profiting from their own family’s pain and her own unwillingness to keep her promise. What they need is a patsy, a rube. They need someone else to volunteer to take the fall for the terrible crime they plan on committing. There is only one choice; their husband must be the one to play the patsy.”

which followed your quote from the article. I read it as meaning that all that follows “you READ that right [emphasis added]” was meant to apply to the article’s author. If not, then my bad.

“It would be quite boring if all I ever did was summarize someone else’ article.”

Of course, I was just suggesting that you, perhaps, didn’t summarize it fairly.

Then if Dalrock had a fight with his wife at any time during their marriage, he is not qualified to speak on “successful” marriage.

No, he is still married to her. Arguing is normal, leaving/disengaging/othering, by either party, is disordered.

Then no Roman Catholic priest is qualified to speak on successful marriage, having themselves never been married. Then Jesus Christ Himself is not qualified to speak on successful marriage, having never Himself been married during His earthly life, and despite the Bible’s recordation of His speaking on marriage and those words being considered the very Words of God.

No, I mean blasphemy aside (gasp!), there are higher vocations than marriage – but if that’s the vocation you accept, you’re in. I think St Paul speaks better than I ever could on the matter, so I won’t presume to lecture. I just think St Paul might be better counsel than Disgruntled Divorcees are Us, or Happier With Hypergamy are Us, or Friends for Fungible Marriage, you get the picture. You’re right though, we could argue all day long, and that’s not what I intended.

Is the criticism valid, regardless of the qualifications of the individual offering the criticism?

deti: “Is the criticism valid, regardless of the qualifications of the individual offering the criticism?”

Velvet: “Sometimes, but not always. And not in this instance.”

Really? So the factual truth of a statement is dependent upon the credibility of the person making the statement?

So a divorced person is forever disqualified from speaking on or interpreting biblical truths on marriage? Is Dawn, who began posting here today, so disqualified? Once a slut, always a slut, even if she truly repents? That means one can never recover from a mistake.

Deti, I’m agreeing with you, other writers notwithstanding, and certainly marriage has merit beyond its participants.

And I guess as far as “our own mouths”, I’m less concerned with coarse speech (St V raises hand, “guilty”) than I am with incorrect polite speech. I cannot reconcile the writing you’ve suggested to Biblical teaching. The flawed vessel is the least of my worries – I’m more concerned with the flawed vessel calling the vessel flawed, if that makes any sense. Where is the education in that?

So the factual truth of a statement is dependent upon the credibility of the person making the statement?

Yes, it is – it’s one measure in the test. Perhaps it speaks more to expediency, but I would, for example, trust a married man before I trusted a divorced man when it came to managing a marriage relationship. I trust a married woman more than I trust a divorced one, when it comes to STAYING married, and if well married or “happily” married is a consideration, than I refine my search further still.

Do I believe a baby murdering death row convict can be converted for Christ – yes, unreservedly. Do I ask him (or her) to babysit my kids – hell to the no. In fact I would offer that I’m protecting us both by doing so.

“I’m more concerned with the flawed vessel calling the vessel flawed, if that makes any sense. Where is the education in that?”

It doesn’t really make any sense. Perhaps we’re talking past each other. I don’t think it makes any difference whether the vessel carrying the message is flawed or not. The truth of the message is unaffected. St. Paul was flawed (“There is none righteous; no, NOT ONE.”).

Alte certainly had no problem coming in here and calling us all broken and ruined vessels. She’s right about that (despite her failure to acknowledge her own brokenness), but it’s beside the point. Doesn’t mean that everything spoken in here today was false — far from it.

And I’ll hold forth no further on esoteric theological points as I’ve hijacked this thread enough.

“separate from their own shortcomings.”
Don’t forget to throw that in there, you wouldn’t want the herd (team woman) see you going soft on the oppressors even if it is your dad looking out for your best interest.

I don’t read CL’s comments that way, but I may be mistaken as to her intent. I read her as speaking from the position of a woman who has confronted her own responsibility for the failure of her marriage, even if she had biblical reason to divorce (I don’t know if she did or did not). I read her harshness as a reflection of the harshness she has viewed her own choices with.

No, you’re not. You’re “arguing semantics” and slinging mud so that you can justify your own grudge.

“CL is unqualified to speak on successful marriage, as she’s divorced. It’s like a nun speaking to her vows once she’s set them aside. She is no longer in authority on the matter.”

Neatly wrapped up and tied with a pretty ribbon. So tell me something. Was CL an authority on marriage while she was married? Perhaps when she was young and naive, doing it wrong, but believing she was doing it right? What qualifies someone to be an authority on marriage? Is it the ability to maintain a public facade of a “correct” marriage, so one can point to one’s own marriage as a shining example?

You clearly aren’t capable of seeing much of anything objectively, but I’ll point this out to you anyway: There are two ways to become an authority on marriage. One is to study other peoples failures and successes, and analyze their behaviors according to logical cause and effect – I call this “rational morality” (and oddly enough, it tends to mirror Biblical morality.) The other is to experience it and learn form one’s own successes and failures. CL has done both. Who are you to deny her authority? Which of them have YOU done? I know you haven’t done the first, because you ignore, evade, and divert attention from, every “logical” statement in every comment on this thread. I’m pretty sure you haven’t done the second, because I don’t think you know what your failures are. Your fear and your pride keep you from even acknowledging them. Oh, I’m sure you admit to the little ones, but you don’t even see the big ones (like, oh I don’t know…PRIDE.)

What is your answer to Deti’s question, “Is the criticism valid, regardless of the qualifications of the individual offering the criticism?” Come on, go for it! No S.t Paul, no derisive labels, no rambling distractions. Is CL’s criticism Biblically correct or Biblically incorrect? Please cite examples.

Here’s why you dismiss CL: YOU DON’T LIKE HER. Period. Perhaps it’s because she has told some truths you don’t want to hear, perhaps not, but you don’t like her. Therefore, based on your FEELINGS, you look for ugly things to say about her. That way you can avoid addressing whether or not her statements are true or not.

You have not made one comment here that isn’t a snide, shaming potshot at an individual statement which you have taken out of context. You have ignored the meat of every comment from anyone you are predisposed to disagree with, and sarcastically sniped at single sentences within those comments. You have addresses a few direct statements, not with facts, but with smug flippancy and vague Biblical references.

You come here presuming yourself to be a superior Christian woman, but all I see is an angry shrew injecting poison. Your lack of logic is sad (not even entertaining) and your smug self righteousness is appalling. You’re either a Queen Bee, or a member of a Queen Bee’s court – a wannabe. Genuine morality is secondary to your own status, and God is in there somewhere, but you keep losing sight of Him. YOU are a textbook example of what’s wrong with modern Christianity.

Here’s a challenge for you: Answer Deti’s question. Use facts, and do it without ONE SINGLE “shaming” word, not one word that implies her moral or intellectual inferiority. If CL’s statements are invalid as you claim, you should be able to argue your points without personal slurs. Come up with some PROVABLE facts that clearly contradict CL.

Incidentally, you may not have noticed yet, but this is not about CL. It’s about how you nit-pick and needle, instead of discussing and debating. Go back to your people who value that crap, and come back when you have something substantive to contribute.

(Dalrock, I apologize for my rudeness, but St. V’s attempts to hijack the conversation and make it all about her, are getting on my nerves. And yes I see the irony in my encouraging her by further addressing her.)

CL is unqualified to speak on successful marriage, as she’s divorced. It’s like a nun speaking to her vows once she’s set them aside. She is no longer in authority on the matter. Its why, while I don’t necessarily believe SCW is correct, theologically speaking, a group of marriage-impaired advisors aren’t necessarily the competent voice for preserving marriage. Yes, there’s certainly a good measure of “don’t do what I did” – but it almost always boils down to “it was done to me”. If we’re reluctant to indulge victimhood, shouldn’t it be across board?
——————————————————————————————-

First, I disagree with CL being disqualified. I hate anecdotes as evidence but I have to share one, I have a divorce from 25 years ago, married a year, no kids no assets and mutually agreed divorce, there was infidelity on her part I busted en flagrante. No matter, now 4 kids and 22 years of marriage, and lots of drama and subsequently tons of research on divorce and the church, I frankly do consider myself a BETTER qualified message carrier than most overly spiritualist Christians, Protestant or Catholic. I frankly have no idea what even is motivating this St V to post this stuff, it seems incongruent with the whole comment flow.

“Marriage impaired” requires way more than seeing if they have a divorce in their past, to assign as a label. One thing I can agree will set up marriage impairment is what she says here with the *it was done to me* repetition. Unless *it* was unequivocal adultery with a real human, physical beatings, and MAYBE one or 2 other things, the “it was done to me” as a claim disqualifies the person too. They can redeem that by being fully honest, which doesnt mean adding little qualifiers like “I know I made mistakes too”.
Until you reach the point where you truly hand over your spouse and their particulars (except those things I mentioned above) to God, in my opinion you are disqualified as a Christian to speak on marriage, because handing that over to God is THE single most important thing someone can do to make marriage work. Own your own crap, allow the spouse to own theirs. If thats the message, I dont care if its the 7th marriage, they finally got it right.

I return to the question, what are you on about St V? Whats your underlying goal? Why are you posting? Whats your point?

Here’s why you dismiss CL: YOU DON’T LIKE HER. Period. Perhaps it’s because she has told some truths you don’t want to hear, perhaps not, but you don’t like her. Therefore, based on your FEELINGS, you look for ugly things to say about her. That way you can avoid addressing whether or not her statements are true or not.

There’s quite some “history” between CL and 7man, on the one hand, and the TC ladies, on the other. From what I understand, the basis is some deep-seated disagreements, but that kind of snowballed.

“CL is unqualified to speak on successful marriage, as she’s divorced. It’s like a nun speaking to her vows once she’s set them aside. She is no longer in authority on the matter. Its why, while I don’t necessarily believe SCW is correct, theologically speaking, a group of marriage-impaired advisors aren’t necessarily the competent voice for preserving marriage. Yes, there’s certainly a good measure of “don’t do what I did” – but it almost always boils down to “it was done to me”. If we’re reluctant to indulge victimhood, shouldn’t it be across board?”

Doesn’t this apply to “SCW” as well? What gives me the impression that she never really took all of 1Cor 7 seriously? Wouldn’t that cast a shadow over her testimony too?

BrendanThere’s quite some “history” between CL and 7man, on the one hand, and the TC ladies, on the other. From what I understand, the basis is some deep-seated disagreements, but that kind of snowballed.

Sounds like a personal problem. Maybe dragging it around in other people’s blogs isn’t the best way to deal with it, eh?

Empathologicalism – ”No matter, now 4 kids and 22 years of marriage, and lots of drama and subsequently tons of research on divorce and the church, I frankly do consider myself a BETTER qualified message carrier than most overly spiritualist Christians, Protestant or Catholic.”

Being as how Divorce 2.0 has become intrinsically linked with Marriage 2.0, perhaps those who’ve gone through a divorce might actually be better positioned to comment on marriage than some who’ve only known being happily married. As humans, some of best learning comes about via trial and error.

Recently YouTube video blogger girlwriteswhat noted that MOST men who arrive at the point of becoming MRA’s and/or participating in the Manosphere have actually arrived there do to some sort of personal emotional trauma that “woke them up” to reality” as men need to overcome both biological hard-wiring and massive social conditioning to start to view themselves as valuable and important beyond their utility to a woman (and women in general). I think it was this one – All those dangerous women-haters!”, but, really, all her stuff is great, so I recommend that anyone who hasn’t already ought to give all her videos a view/listen.
For what it’s worth, author Michelle Langley who wrote “Women’s Infidelity” herself acknowledges that she only sought to learn more about the issue from the female perspective after cheating on her ex-husband. And, some of the most respected and knowledgeable posters (and ex-bloggers) have likewise gained greater understanding of issue due to their having gone through it themselves.
One might even think it common sense that those who’ve never had any serious difficulty in a marriage ought NOT to try to instruct anyone else on how to handle serious marital difficulties.
But, any rational person can also readily understand that one doesn’t actually have to have gone through a particular issue to understand that issue, they need only be willing to educate themselves about it to better understand it. And, as appears to be the case with SCW, even going through a very serious marital difficulty does not ensure that a person will learn correctly. They may actually end up being even more confused or deluded than before.
In the end, it’s probably better to NOT prejudge anyone’s views based on their personal “credentials” (by which I necessarily include their personal experiences), but rather consider what they have to say; and if there are points of disagreement with what they say, address those points – not the persons history nor any personal shortcomings that we might attribute to them.

As a personal example, returning to this thread after days+ absence, I see that I have a hater – ray – who is likely to do little more than attack me personally for anything I might post. Now, as you might imagine, seeing as how I am only human, I don’t like ray. Yet, neither the facts that he hates me and I don’t care for him, nor even the fact that he suggested that God sent killer tornados to damage police cars as some divine warning to law enforcement (which, I believe secures his position as lead f*cking nut-job), will mean that ray might not be entirely correct in his views on some future topic. It’s even possible, however unlikely it might seem, that he and I might disagree on something, and he could be right, and I be wrong. So, even in the case of ray, I would argue that his actual words be considered first and foremost, rather than the arguable fact that he’s an asshat.;)

My position would be that neither is either uniquely qualified to speak on marriage (successful, or otherwise), nor is either disqualified to do so. They are both entitled to their respective opinions, but neither is owed greater deference when they chose to give those opinions.

That sort of psudo-credentialism should not “carry” the debate. As an example, is there anything worse than trying to debate a woman intellectually, only to have her play the “I was a victim” card, as if something she (may have?) once endured invalidates any counter-argument while elevating her views to some unassailable level. [That might be even worse than reading a comment from ray. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating. But, women doing that is really, really annoying]

On a side note, seeing as how I’ve stood up for one woman (SCW) against another woman (CL), and now seem to be standing up for that second woman against a 3rd (Saint Velvet); am I headed for some special order of White-Knight, say, White-Knight Templar, or some such Hell? (Or, perhaps some ring of Purgatory, seeing as how we have a number of Catholics?) If so, is there anyway to redeem myself?

Not only do women typically blame all culpability for their divorce on their husbands but they will also systematically remove any witnesses from their lives. Like Stalinist purge, they start by eliminating their main opponent but quickly expand to relatives, friends, co-workers, and even acquaintances who know the truth in order to be able to remove anyone who could threaten them with their past. They will do this often by moving away (going back to mom) but also changing jobs, church, friends, and even relatives (and they said you can’t choose your relatives). In more extreme for they alienate blood relatives of their children even if those grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins have an overwhelmingly positive influence on their children’s lives. In the end, these women are surrounded only by sympathetic figures that will support and nurture the new myth of martyrdom and victimhood. Or as Stalin was fond of saying, “No person, no problem”.

Best idea ever!
This new erotic book 50 shades of grey that has tingling occurring coast to coast is a perfect exercise in game proof text. You know Ive been hard on some game gurus, but not the thing itself, and here is a ready made example of a boom about a young woman signing away the right for an older man to literally control her in every way, sexually and otherwise, and the feminists and mommys and women are LOVING it!. It SHOULD be roundly hated by feminists. But it is way too titillating.

See this article, and send me my 50 cents!

Id write about it, but no one reads there, and Im not the right person to derive game info from it. I may write about it from a different standpoint, but I betcha can do somethin cool widdit.

True, Id add one more element, they will attempt to convert people to their side before the eliminate them. In fact they will fish for who is on the fence and work it like a campaign, if they get an empathy nibble, its a keeper.

Our Enemy’s demand on humans takes the form of a dilemma; either complete abstinence or unmitigated monogamy. Every since Our Father Below’s first great victory, we have rendered the former very difficult to them.

The latter, for the last few centuries, we have been closing up as a way of escape. We have done this through the poets and novelists by persuading the humans that a ridiculous, and usually short-lived, experience which they call ‘being in love’ is the only respectable ground for marriage; that marriage can, and ought to, render this curious excitement permanent; and that a marriage which does not do so is no longer binding, and indeed, that they are virtuous for ending it.

I have been lurking, not paying a lot of attention when I saw where things had headed.
I do believe that someone who has divorced and is now in a good relationship can advise on marriage. Not everyone mind you. I wouldn’t listen to too much advice from my mother in law because she has been married five times. But I would listen to my best friend who has been divorced twice, Then I have one friend who has been married 19 years and never divorced and I wouldn’t listen to a thing she said, she is a shrew to her husband and most other people (I really don’t know why we are friends)
We can really learn from are mistakes, I believe that is why we have a memory of our past so we can see where we screwed up and do better next time. I made plenty of mistakes in my first marriage that I wouldn’t dare do in this marriage. And I think that I am qualified to tell someone about what makes a happy marriage in my opinion.
Some people on the other hand never learn the mistakes they have made(case in point- mother in law) they do really stupid things, selfish things. She recently had an affair with a man ten years younger than my husband, My husbands comment on that was “now you see why I hated women before we started dating?” but I do learn from watching her and doing the opposite.
So we can be a benefit to someone even if we failed previously.

Doesn’t this apply to “SCW” as well? What gives me the impression that she never really took all of 1Cor 7 seriously? Wouldn’t that cast a shadow over her testimony too?

Yes, I’d agree with that. I should say I’ve never read her blog, only what’s been excerpted here, but in general, I consider one of the first rules of marriage being to not denigrate your spouse in public (or at all, actually), or tarnish his/her image even if it seems to be done somewhat innocently. Malice is a tricky thing, I do believe our Enemy has ways of making the nicest people profoundly wrong – if honoring your vows is your intention, you need your family and your friends on the side of your marriage, (one flesh being the operative concept – talking crap on your spouse is like kicking your own ass), that can’t happen if your trash talking your mate. I would say she has too much else going on and would serve her marriage, and thereby herself, by not continuing the public side of it. That’s what pastoral care is for.

Suz, you’re a presumptuous drink of water, aren’t you? I don’t have anything against CL in the “like” category. I just think she’s wrong. I can think people are wrong all day long and not harbor any ill toward them. It’s called being a grown up, or a member of a family, or – normal. There’s lot’s of people I wouldn’t take marriage advice from, it doesn’t mean I wish they were dead or anything, sheesh. As for the rest of it, I think you’re wrong, too, but I sincerely hope you have a great day!

Aaaaand here we have some smug flippancy:
“It’s called being a grown up… ”

Oh look! There’s some distraction too:
” I’ve never read her blog, only what’s been excerpted here, but in general….”

At what point did you answer Deti’s question? Did I miss It?

{{And speaking of presumptuous:
from the word “pre·sume”
[pri-zoom] Show IPA verb, -sumed, -sum·ing.
verb (used with object)
1.to take for granted, assume, or suppose: I presume you’re tired after your drive.
2.Law . to assume as true in the absence of proof to the contrary.
3.to undertake with unwarrantable boldness.
4.to undertake (to do something) without right or permission: to presume to speak for another.
*courtesy of dictionary.com

“There’s lot’s of people I wouldn’t take marriage advice from, it doesn’t mean I wish they were dead or anything, sheesh.”
Did I say that you “wish they were dead…” or did you “presume” that’s what I meant?}}

You are out of your league, Princess. You might as well go on back to Hamsterville and chase your tail.

Now all you have left to do is toss your head, stick your nose firmly in the air, and flounce out of the room. Don’t forget to roll your eyes.

We can really learn from are mistakes, I believe that is why we have a memory of our past so we can see where we screwed up and do better next time. I made plenty of mistakes in my first marriage that I wouldn’t dare do in this marriage

If only more people would adopt this type of thinking, the world would be a better place

Suz, at what point did you get the impression that I was at all interested in doing anything to satisfy you? Should I be expecting a paycheck? I appreciate the fisk though, and to that I say – blink. blink.

If I gave the impression that I was being dismissive of Deti, however, I don’t take that lightly. He’s only ever been kind and accommodating when we’ve exchanged comments, most people here have, and I think I made it pretty clear that I’m not always the best communicator, which is why I set our conversation aside, where it was, at what I took as his suggestion “we’re talking past each other) – that said, I stand by my comments. Some people agree, some don’t. Princess, pfft, that’s Barbie to you.

Legion, I had a dream about you – do you by any chance have a pet alligator?

…in other words, no you’e not going to give a simple yes-or-no answer to a simple question asked by Deti: “Is the criticism valid, regardless of the qualifications of the individual offering the criticism?”

If you say “yes,” it would be a retraction of your previous statement, “CL is unqualified to speak on successful marriage, as she’s divorced.” If you say “no,” you can’t give a reason. You ARE dismissive of Deti, since you continue to ignore his question; you just hope he gets so bogged down in your deflections and your obfuscations, that he won’t notice. Communication isn’t what you’re not good at; what you can’t do is take responsibility for your own arrogant words.

For a Christian, you sure seem to have a problem with accountability. Odd, that, since the reason you came here was to hold CL “accountable,” for being mean to SCW by calling her out. That WAS your reason, right? You’re not just attention-whoring and lording your superiority over us cretins, right?

One of the things I know about good christians is supposed to be their humilty. As you haved the arrogance to cannonize yourself a saint, I assume you are not christian and are merely mocking them with your pseudoname. Also your stupid and obnoxious remarks are certain to bring dicredit to all christians. So, obviously, your mission has been accomplished.

I was convicted from the commenters to not mention my husband’s affair in a public way because that would be hurtful to him and to our marriage; and therefore would effect our “oneness”. At the time, it felt like the right thing to do, later when I told my husband he said, “sometimes it is better that the world sees our ugliness because then they are better able to see Christ”. Which made me feel like I’d done the wrong thing and I questioned my decision and felt awful. I thought about all the marriages that I wasn’t helping and all the women out there who are alone after suffering infidelity with no one to talk to and how I couldn’t help them. Then I remembered that I live in grace and I don’t HAVE to always make the right decisions, God will still keep His promises to me and He doesn’t NEED me. He is able to help these women with or without my help, it is just a blessing to be used by Him. So, I’m bummed about losing my blog; but you know, my oldest daughter will start being able to read next year, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to hide it from her. Although I think my husband plans on telling them some day (maybe when they are teenagers?) in the future, because it is so much more important that they learn how grace works than that they think their parents are perfect. So, I’m going to be okay. God is still going to use me somehow and I still think I’m going to talk about the ugly in my life, because that is when you best see Christ and not me.

Sexy Christian Wife – “I was convicted from the commenters to not mention my husband’s affair in a public way because that would be hurtful to him and to our marriage”.

I’d have to say that this was actually very wise of you. As a matter of full discloser, I myself used to be just a bit to free about revealing some certain behaviors of my wife earlier on in our marriage (short of physical infidelity), which she had ceased and had asked my forgiveness for.

She told some time back that my frequent mention of such matters made her feel as though I must still hold it against her. Even though I did not hold it against her, like you, I felt convicted that I needed to refrain from any further mention of that situation so as not to hurt her.

Even if you husband says that he doesn’t wish it to be kept private, I still feel that, in the long-run, you have done what is best for your marriage.

You had some skeptics, who raised some doubts about your intentions (i.e. you were putting it on God, rather than on your husband, supposedly so that if he stumbled, you could then say God wanted you to divorce; and that you were an attention seeker). I even had some doubts about you myself, even though I firmly believed that you certainly had solid ground to divorce if you could not find peace about his affairs, nor the trust to believe he wouldn’t resume the affair (regardless of any promise you might have made to take him back).

But, your last post certainly set me straight about you. It is apparent to me that you are quite serious about restoring your marriage (and, hopefully, getting the other women not only out of your husbands life, but out of his mind as well). I know it must be hard for you. I seriously doubt I could have been as forgiving. So, I really do admire your effort.

And, at least IMHO, that you suffered the slings and arrows here, and yet still returned to respond demonstrates a good deal of courage. I also admire that in you.

SCW,
I’m glad you posted that comment. My first inclination was to make a snarky response about how a little dose of consequences can cure a whole lot of foolishness, but I think you may be capable of seeing farther than that. Maybe not, but considering the upheaval and emotional pain you have suffered, you may actually get what I’m about to say.

Your 9:03 comment was a long rambling list of the feelings associated with your decisions to publicly expose your husband, and then to stop publicly exposing him. “Feelings,” not a rational assessment of the consequences, are what you used to make both decisions. You have been badly hurt and you felt justified in blogging about him, so you pointed out the lessons that others might learn from your blog. Similarly, you were shocked and appalled by the public reaction to you blog, once its contents became known outside your usual circle. I don’t doubt that was painful. Yet you knew all along that airing dirty laundry is not an act for a submissive Christian wife. You also knew all along that there are those who might call you out on it because they know it too. You were counselled by wiser women than you, but you decided to do what YOU wanted, and you found ways to rationalize it. You even influenced your husband to agree with you. ( Don’t think for a minute that he was not influenced by his guilt.) You “got away” with it for a while by surrounding yourself with people who would see your struggles and empathize with your suffering, rather than admonishing you for disrespecting your husband. Go to a dictionary and look up the term: Groupthink. Any group of likeminded people can, in isolation from outside influence, justify ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING. That’s what is happening on your Christian Women’s forum, and that is why so many men feel its foolish to marry Christian women. With the support of your Christian “friends,” you convinced yourself that it was OK to humiliate your husband.

YOU ARE NOT A SUBMISSIVE WIFE. In the secular world, non-submissive wives make their families miserable. In the Christian world, non-submissive wives make their families miserable, and they disobey God! I don’t think you really understand the concept of submission. It doesn’t mean you submit to your husband only when he’s right, it means you always submit to your husband because you trust him to get it right, even when he has to learn some things the hard way. I can imagine it’s pretty hard to trust a man who has betrayed you, but I’ll bet my last dollar you didn’t trust him BEFORE he betrayed you. Living according to Christian principles means trusting your husband COMPLETELY. You don’t step around your husband to get to God, you let him lead you to God, ON THE PATH HE CHOOSES.

Christian men in the Manosphere think self proclaimed “devout” Christian women make the worst wives, because MOST such women behave just like you did. You want to get your way, so you nag, you belittle, you contrive excuses using Biblical language, and you surround yourself with friends who say, “You go girl!” You label yourself as the King’s Daughter, with the assumption that no mortal man will ever live up to the standards of your “Father.” So you start your marriage from a position of moral superiority (over your husband) and you tell him where God wants him to lead you. I’ve got news for you: your husband is not your personal pack mule, carrying your worldly burdens so you can indulge in your crush on Jesus.

You now have the power in your relationship; he gave it to you when he cheated. If he wants to keep you, he must be willing to do anything you say. That gives you satisfaction. Don’t bother to deny it; you used his betrayal to garner sympathy and attention from your peers. (What else have you used it for?) The problem with that satisfaction, that rush of power, is that it’s fleeting. Not only that, but you can’t use it productively. You cannot repair and save what’s left of your marriage if you wield that much power over your husband. The only way to save your marriage is to give it back to him. Completely. If your husband isn’t repentant, you might as well walk away; infidelity is one of the few legitimate reasons for divorce, and it’s often better to divorce than to live, as a Christian, in an unChristian marriage. If his repentance is genuine enough that he let you publicly humiliate him, then save your marriage by becoming a true Christian wife. Trust him, follow him meekly. You have the power to save your marriage by giving ALL that power back to him.

The wives who want their husbands to cheat are the ones looking for an easy divorce and societal approval for the split and subsequent alimony + custody of children.
A break from that would make it much harder for them to spin a tale of woe to their friends.
But what these funny women don’t realise is:
1) Divorce is contagious among a circle of friends,
2) The other women in that circle will make sure their husbands are not around you.

After reading some of your stuff, I see how my phrasing of “it’s not my fault” would strike a nerve in your group. You misunderstand me. If I could have made the affair my fault, then I could prevent it from happening again, which is what I wanted to happen most in the world. Relinquishing fault from his choices was admitting that I am not in control of his spiritual life and that I have no control over his choice to have an affair in the future. This doesn’t mean that I won’t do everything possible to make our marriage successful.

“A woman who has regular sex with her husband honors the economic exchange of sorts that is necessary to a marriage: his fidelity for hers; her sexual charms for his support. It used to be part of the “contract” between husband and wife that she will have sex with him when he wants. In my view, barring genuine medical issues, a wife should be having sex with her husband regularly, or she isn’t holding up her end of the bargain. ”

You may be substituting flowery terms like “Sexual charms” and “Support” in place of the coarser language usually used, but make no mistake, that’s a prostitution contract you’re describing.

In the movie “Pretty Woman,” Richard Gere offers Julia Roberts unfettered access to his credit cards for a week in return for sole access to her sexuality. No other Johns but him. The amount is not specified and the acts she performs in return are not specified. What differentiates their contractual arrangement from the marriage contract besides duration?

@ybm “No man chooses to raise another mans child unless he has no other option. ”

Bullcrap. Your ability to act charitably is obviously dwarfed by wild dogs. You couldn’t see an orphan on the street and say, “he needs someone?” I’m glad I’ve never met someone as slimy as you in real life.

I wouldn’t quit writing (I couldn’t) if I were you SCW. Maybe you can start a new one, or edit your old one. I’ll be praying that God helps you find an avenue for ministry and that you will hear His voice clearly.

Just please be careful about using the term “Christians” as used in this article. The behavior described is not Christ-like, nor does He approve. “christians” with a small-c would be preferable, “pseudo-Christians” even better.

Excellent article.
You have succinctly described my divorce (ex cheated on me) and the incredible wreckage of a hard earned community (house, savings etc ) and cost me my career & credit.
God has been incredibly faithful and kept me and brought me through (much like Lot).
Now I am quite taken back by professing Christian women who are more concerned with their personal autonomy / fun than following Jesus, understanding consequences, and the welfare of their own children.
Titan (my faithfulcollie) and I are confirmed bachelors for the rest of our lives.

1) Anyone from the Gen X and above generations can only ever be a) useful idiots or b) enemies.

2) Women can only ever be a) useful idiots or b) enemies

3) Homosexuals can only ever be a) useful idiots or b) enemies

Because as long as society enables a single woman to be like that, all women are assumed to be like that by default. And given the chauvinism of the older generations that is a direct threat to the existence of younger men; and homosexuals historic ties to the feminist, female supremacist hate movement, they simply can never really be trusted in full.

We must accept the fact that the Christian Churches are Babylon the Great reborn, and that Christian women are it’s temple prostitutes.

After reading most of the replies (forgive me, but some here are enthralled with their own somewhat tedious press) I feel compelled to relate my story. I am a male, in the throes of a divorce after she cheated on me twice, that I know of. I am not perfect but have always taken care of my three children. She wanted an “open marriage” and I refused. She told me to get a girl friend. I refused. She has a boyfriend. Now I am an inattentive, lazy, old father, who does nothing. To all here, she is obvious seeking to justify her divorcing me and living down the fact that she, after going to a marriage counselor, refuse to help make the marriage work! The funny thing is that the children want to live with me. Not her which if they can, will be her punishment.

SCW’s husband seems to me to have not just been caught having had a couple of relatively meaningless flings based on sexual opportunity, without any real relationship; but actually has deep feeling for the other women (more like what wives have for their lovers), which adds a greater depth of harm to the marriage beyond the hurt that just sexual infidelity entails.
_____________________________________________________________________

So true. Something I cannot talk about even ten years after I found out.

If a woman is constantly accusing you of infidelity, it is time to take a serious look at her actions when she thinks you’re not around. If you are not actually cheating, and you feel you must defend yourself again unwarranted accusations, then chances are it is your wife who is cheating.

In my case, she was having a after that had lasted from 1989 until 2000. THE REASON the affair ended was that my “wife” was trying to get her “lover” to commit. Finally she did an act of desperation, she deliberately got pregnant by him .

For every Christmas ever, as far back as I can remember, she was always too tired, too sick or she had to work. I would take our children over to my Parents for the family get together.

Turns out, she was building memories with him in my house and in my bed.

There is so much that happened. I get angry every time I think about it. I have to hold everything inside. This is the first time I have ever posted or talked about it, but the men here seem really genuine and they can spot female manipulation from afar. I admire that. It took me many years to master as I had been living a DELUSION; making my wife the “virgin” Queen of the House when I should have sold her to a brothel as a cheap whore.

The affair ended when her “lover” called it off after she told him that she was pregnant. See, my wife would say things to me like, “You’re no man”. Her “Allen” was a real man. He hunted, fished, worked on cars and watched all kinds of sports. She loved him. Some “man” he turned out to be once there was more than fun involved.

FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE, I WILL WAKE UP KNOWING THAT IF ONLY ALLEN HAD BEEN HAPPY AT JL’S PREGNANCY…IF ONLY HE HAD SAID “YES”…THEN I WOULDN’T EVEN BE HERE. (Yes, I am still here). How can I ever feel truly loved, no matter how sorry she is? The facts are the facts and JL decided that I was “worthy” of her only AFTER Allen dropped her.

It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving woman. (She then went out and had an abortion which shows you the type of person she is.)

I’m spouting. I don’t like it when people do that and I am guilty. Sorry.

I HURT like you wouldn’t believe and my sympathies are for every man who has ever suffered at the hands of these very vile and despicable women. This journey is hell.

Always all this talk about
the kids, the kids the kids”,…your destroying the kids.

Personally, myself and my 5 best frineds grwoing up all came from divorced homes. To be quite honest the most crewed up people I know came from non-divorced homes. Hell, our president was raised by a single mother. He did alright for himself. And kids wont be kids forever. They grow up inot adults, and generally forget about the sacrifcies their parents made to stay together. Your childhoos sort of fades away as an adult. Since when did kids begin to run the hsow anyway? i think this is why thre is so much depression, ther is soooo much infliuence on the kids and so little on ourselves being happy.

Me, I was happy with some stocks and some broken tonka trucks as a kid. Couldnt have been happier. I didnt need to have arts and crafts day with mommmy and daddy and family vacations where everyone is unhappy and doing it just because of societal pressures.

I am sorry to read your story. You have been badly hurt. All I can tell you is that what you are feeling is totally normal. I haven’t been through actual cheating, but I’ve been through something similar. I can tell you that what I’ve been through was and is painful as hell.

I cannot tell you that you should divorce. What I can tell you is that you’re still hurting, and you need some help. Please get it, so you can feel your feelings, work through them, and reach a conclusion to them that you, your wife and children can live with. That might be staying together. That might be divorce. I don’t know.

Continue reading here. As you will see, the truths you find here will cause you not to see women the same ways you used to. You see your wife, and women in general, as the flawed human beings they are, rather than as the perfect, sinless creatures they want you to think they are.

I really think half the battle of leaving an old beta life behind is two important components:

1. Take women down off the pedestal and see them as they really are: with strong sexual desires, needing leadership and guidance, and not catering to their emotions; and

I was watching Wuthering Heights with my wife. Basically… it’s girl-loves-bad-boy… then girl-marries-nice-guy… then bad-boy-comes-back-and-he’s-rich.

So it’s the wedding day for Edgar-the-nice-guy. After the parties and everything… it’s the big moment in the bedroom. When it comes to the point, Catherine-the-slut claims to be tired and maybe he can have the servants set him up in a different room that night.

This floored me. How horrible! In the doghouse on the first night! My wife, on the other hand, was nonplussed. “She’s not in love with him,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Love.”

To a woman, it is all the justification she’ll ever need for fornication, adultery, and the defrauding her rightful husband. Incredible. But there is no shame…. These creatures that are considered to be so naturally relational and empathetic, they have no shame for their actions and no sympathy for the invisible men that they destroy.

@James – I went through a similar situation and a very nasty California divorce with my ex-wife. She had it very, very good and it was very difficult and $$$ to get rid of her.
Just remember what goes around comes around.
My ex has had 3 suicide attempts (1 documented), morbidly obese, genital herpes, and seeing some tatted ex-con who has cheated on her multiple times.

I have seen “what goes around comes around” quite a few times. Women are very good about “hiding it. I Ran across a gal when dating who decided to divorce her faithful husband. She admitted it was the worse mistake she ever made ( shocked me). Marriage #2 was a disaster and the kids all turned out obese, no education, and all had children out of wedlock ( this was a from a educated above average family). She openly admitted she regrets it to this day and how emotionally “whacked” she is.
I have ran across a number of other women who divorced their friviously divorced or screwed around their husbands only to realize how badly they screwed up and some spin endlessly the rationalization hamster on failed relationships thereafter.
They discovered “the hard way” no guy wants them and their emotional and/or situational baggage and their “entitled” attitudes and horrible relationship manners.

Btw, in regards of what to do.
Dont repeat the same mistake twice.
Dont marry or get involved with a American women or a unchaste woman.
To many guys jump on the glandular urge without knowing the character of the women. Women will use sex to trick a guy.
Keep “your power: for yourself and dont waste time, money, or any resources on women that are not marriage material.
Enjoy what your hobbies, career, and keeping yourself in shape ( dont be a typical American).
Emotional, physical, mental, spiritual discipline go a long way and one reaps exactly what they sow – that is a universal unchangeable law.

I have ran across a number of other women who .. friviously divorced or screwed around their husbands only to realize how badly they screwed up

Yeah, one of my friends got filed on, while he was in Air Force boot camp. She had no biblical grounds for it. She plainly admitted, her motive was that she didn’t want to be “poor” all her life. When he challenged her about her supposed Christian faith, and how she’d justify the divorce before God, she said she’d worry about that later. She moved in with, then got remarried to a rich guy… and it didn’t work out.

He got remarried also. Then his economic fortunes changed radically. He ended up getting the home and land and everything else that wife #1 wanted but thought he could never provide. But some other woman is enjoying it.

That horse analogy works well. Men are the workhorses, but women treat them like shit. Pretty soon the workhorse loses their health and desire. Kind of like Animal Farm, where everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others.

@van Rooinek – I echo your findings. Every single woman I know that has friviously divorced her husband and/or cheated on him has regretted it and tried to get back in a rather understated way.
In addition, they have screwed up their lives and their kids too.

Behind every friviously divorced man is a bitter regretful woman who has turned into a feral, hypergamous sociopath of which men avoid avoid marrying.

You can’t say, “porn is ok, because she does XYZ.” Especially if she doesn’t. What if a woman doesn’t read romance novels or has never been with another man before. What if she only has a heart and body for you and you choose to look at images of others and climax to them? To me, it’s sinful. And no, it’s not like putting “blinkers” on a man. I’m not saying that a man can’t notice an attractive woman that walks by him or on tv. But actively going online and seeking out naked images of women that aren’t your wife to get you off to, is wrong. It is finding women other than your wife to fulfill your needs – THAT is cheating. I’m not trying to shame you men, but I just can’t imagine how lusting after women not your wife (women who were probably sexually abused and drug-addicted to produce the worthless garbage that they do) and climaxing to them is Christian behavior. It’s not Christian. And I hope the responses don’t include more, “but, but she does XYZ….” Her sins do not absolve yours – they are independent of one another in the eyes of God. I hate when people pick and choose aspects of religion that are convenient for them. Religion is hard, but it is worth it!

Don’t know what the Higgins scale is. Just going to assume that your comment is some slam against me for being crazy, bitchy, controlling, fat, ugly, stupid, or other typical manosphere insult. Thanks for assessing me rather than the argument.

I agree that porn is wrong tracey, we did not say porn is right. You will have to back up that assumption to be taken seriously. What you seem to be missing is that it’s not ‘cheating’ but ‘fornication’. Adultery does not include porn or romance novels, adultery is the sexual act with another person who is not your spouse. This is really not hard to understand and it’s why farm boy has put you on the scale at 8.

The Higgins Scale is named after Henry Higgins, a character in My Fair Lady. He stated,

Why is thinking something women never do?
Why is logic never even tried?
Straightening up their hair is all they ever do.
Why don’t they straighten up the mess that’s inside?

The scale goes from 0 to 10 in value and measures the strength of a female’s rationalization hamster. The value of zero effectively means that there is no rationalization hamster, and ten meaning one on steroids (often with the steroid rage). Since it is impossible to directly measure this value, it is done subjectively by rational males.

fb: if it was a married woman ogling the boys of Twilight, I would object to that, too. wasn’t asking for your assessment of me, but a discussion of the concerns stated. i guess that’s what guys like you do. rather than discuss something that hits too close to home and exposes your behavior as un-Christian, you just name call to attempt to discredit others and divert attention from the topic at hand. just put downs and dismissal, like the rest of the men on here. btw, i put you down as a 9 on my arbitrary, self-serving, similarly idiotic scale, too – OH BURRRRRN!

The problem, Tracey, is that you are treating three quit different things as if they were the same thing. Porn consumption, masturbation, and adultery are all moral wrongs, to be sure. But they aren’t the same thing, any more than stealing a cookie and murdering a homeless person are the same thing, even though both are moral wrongs.

Porn consumption and masturbation are moral wrongs, but they aren’t cheating. I’m Catholic, and Catholic doctrine doesn’t allow divorce and remarriage for any reason whatsoever. (I’m talking doctrine here, not the various ways many Catholics in practice go about avoiding and getting around that doctrine).

The various Protestant confessions do allow divorce for cheating though. So the impression you are giving is that you want to expand the Protestant license for divorce to include things like masturbation and porn consumption. It is Protestant inside baseball to me, as an outsider: I don’t concede that cheating is grounds for divorce and remarriage in the first place. But I think you owe it to yourself and to others here to be clear about precisely what you hope to accomplish by expanding the definition of cheating to include other things which, while definitely moral wrongs, are not cheating.

^ “the 8.0 still stands” SNAP! OOOOH BURRRRRRN! farm boy, what am going to do? how can i live without your approval? i mean, i NEED your approval – PLEASE reconsider your rating of me! it..just….hurts….so…MUCH! I’m going to sit here and ball my eyes out until you change your opinion of me – it means that much.

Do you believe that porn consumption and masturbation by a spouse are legitimate grounds for divorce and remarriage? (If you’ve already answered this elsewhere, I apologize but would still appreciate an answer. Dalrock’s threads get so many comments that I only read a fraction of them).

I’m so glad that at least YOU approve of me, ybm!!!! 🙂 It means a lot to me!!!!! I’d love for you to keep me!!!!!! PLZ!!!!! THNK U!!!!!

Not obsessed with other people’s marriages. Could give a flying fuck about other people’s marriages. Just had to call BS when I read that porn is just hunky dory for Christians to use. It’s not. Christians are just self serving a-holes today – picking and choosing aspects of morality to engage in, to fit their conveniences and self-perceived “needs”. You either lead a moral life or you don’t. I do care about all the other issues that you stated, but we’re discussing porn right now.

Tracey:Just had to call BS when I read that porn is just hunky dory for Christians to use.

I haven’t read every comment, but I’ve been looking for where it is claimed by a Christian that porn and masturbation are just hunky dory for Christians. Maybe you can show me what you are referring to.

Do you or do you not view porn consumption and/or masturbation as grounds for divorce?

Zippy: If I caught my husband looking at porn, I’d ask him why. I’d want to know if there was a problem with us – am I not giving it to him enough, not enough variety, does he not like the way I look anymore, etc. I would want some constructive feed back in the hopes of fixing any deficiencies so that he wouldn’t need porn. God wanted us to enjoy each others’ bodies only – not random, drugged up skanks on the internet. It wouldn’t create a huge problem in my marriage, if we were honest about it and if it were a rare occurrence. If it ranged from regular use to addictive use, it would cause serious rifts (this could contribute to divorce, if there are other compounding issues). I’m a woman who believes in waiting for marriage. Its hard to wait – especially when you have ample opportunity and desire. I expect him to make a little sacrifice on his part for the good of our marriage, just as I have. But this wasn’t what I was addressing. I was addressing this attitude (somewhere above) that porn use by one spouse was perfectly fine in a marriage (esp a Christian marriage). Sorry, I just don’t agree. My opinion, believe what you want.

I wrote:Do you consider porn consumption and/or masturbation to be grounds for divorce?

Tracey replied:Like I said, it depends. Nothing is ever clear cut.

OK, so you do support the idea that porn consumption can, in some instances (though not necessarily all), be grounds for divorce.

That certainly explains why you would put so much time and effort into attempting to obfuscate the difference between porn and cheating. Furthermore, your expressed view is that all sorts of complex things can be grounds for divorce.

I think you ought to just forthrightly admit to the rest of the commenters here that you don’t believe in Christian marriage, period. Your obsessive attempts to conflate porn and cheating are just a reflection of your underlying view of “marriage” as, essentially, just another dissoluable LTR.

That isn’t what marriage actually is in reality though. Marriage anti-essentialists can play all the nominalist name-games they want; but labeling a pile of feces “dinner” won’t change it into steak.

Sorry, I’m not scrolling through all those comments again. Read through all of deti’s quotes. He alluded that porn was fine (at least something to be overlooked) and stated that it wasn’t cheating. I disagree with both. Please read my comments above regarding women and textual porn. I’m not typing it out again.

Tracey:
Well, either you answered my yes/no question “yes, sometimes porn use is grounds for divorce”, or you didn’t answer it and instead produced a bunch of words designed to evade the question. Take your pick.

@tracey – the reason a man would look at porn is his wife has cut him off and/or he has cut her off because he/she is physically and/or personality unattractive.
This disconnect starts with porn(male/female) due to a need not being met because there is a communication breakdown.
Where the rubber meets the road is when actual communication /physical / emotional connection happens outside the marriage.

If ones needs are not being met – they will be met.
– a wife will never look like a stripper or porn star
– a husband will never be Magic Mike / 50SoG Alpha

Allow me to suggest to both parties have realistic and wholesome needs and do the best with what you have.

“So if a husband sneaks occasional porn use (not addiction), what’s a wife to do? Look the other way?”

What does the Bible tell the wife to do tracey? My Bible says she should submit, is confronting her husband regarding sin submission? Is she supposed to submit to an ungodly husband? Are we to submit to ungodly governments (as per Romans 13)? Show me from the Bible where it tells a woman to critique her husbands flaws and take his sins personally. Please show me where the Bible establishes a set of guidelines by which a woman can frivorce her husband for his lack of godliness.

I think it is impossible for a woman to lead while following, to submit while sitting as judge over her husband. I have the Bible to back my assertions up.

I’m half through with reading this. You seem far too rational to be a practicing christian. Consider exploring the other side’s rebuttal to your beliefs, and you’ll soon give them up. You’ll be X100 happier, seriously.

As a young man in college, an associate of my dad introduced me to his daughter, my age. She was very attractive and a sweet heart to me, although we only visited once, due to my own ineptitude in the dating scene. My dad told me she was looking for a husband…..scared the crap out of me! So I never pursued a relationship with her. Next thing I know that gal has up and married herself a guy, that as I now learn 38 years later was 11 years her senior. (‘Turns out he is now living in GuangDong, China. ‘Probly found himself another subservient woman who will wipe his rear for him.) Well that marriage was over just about the time I graduated college. I had never heard anything about her since then, until recently. Turns out she has had three marriages and divorces, with men who also have had multiple marriages and divorces. So I am on the one hand mourning the loss of opportunity with her, but on the other grateful to God Himself that He lead me away from her. I have known and seen many a young girl who is “looking for a husband”, as if a husband is some kind of commodity. That’s incredibly off-putting to me as a guy. Should they not be more focussed on looking for a good and decent man who they can love and be haaaapy with, and who will treat them right? Sheesh, I’ve never seen such stupidity from ostensibly wise people. Who (and what preachers) are these girls getting their advice from?

I worry about posts like this. Not because I disagree, mind you. I just wonder at what it does to the men who put up with this abuse because their wives don’t have the courage to admit how they don’t feel about him anymore, and even less have the courage to tell him what they really want him to be; this comes at least partially because I think women don’t actually know what they want their man to be, just not as he is.

I don’t disagree with your post. I see it like they are wanting things both ways at once. They want the excitement of the Favio-type guy, but they want to come home to the reliability and steadiness of Joe engineer. They want to be loved in more than just the physical way, which I suggest is not actually love at all. Most guys have to wrestle with that as well. What guy wouldn’t like to have permission to go find himself a great looking escort every now and then? But that isn’t consistent with having a loving wife and family. No woman would go for that, and it isn’t good for children either, not to mention the health risks. Most guys, and for the most part, most women, realize you can’t have it both ways at the same time. So they try to get their partner to be someone he/she isn’t, and it results in major stress for their partner and disappointment for themselves. Some people just get married until the lust dies, then they get divorced, find someone else and do the same thing all over again. Some people just swap spouses with their friends every ten years or so.

Why do men even care what their aging, sagging, fat, old wives want or feel anyway? Aren’t men all about youth, beauty, and variety? As long as you have a pre-nup and take care of your assets and kids, who cares about the wife?

Why? Very simple: men want their wives to feel about them the way they feel about their wives. And because of the tendency (or tactic, depending on your POV) of women to conceal how they feel from the men in their lives, these men often are unaware that their wives don’t share their feelings.

“Very simple: men want their wives to feel about them the way they feel about their wives.”

You are making the assumption that most men love and want their wives. This isn’t usually or even often true. From what I’ve seen, the 7 year-itch has become the 2 year itch these days and monogamy is very unnatural for most (if not, all) men.

You are making the assumption that most men love and want their wives. This isn’t usually or even often true. From what I’ve seen, the 7 year-itch has become the 2 year itch these days and monogamy is very unnatural for most (if not, all) men.
———————–
That flies in the face of their actually getting married at all. A woman gets a significant financial gain from the arrangement. A man generally does not benefit, so if he did not love or want her, wished to chase other women, then why would he marry at all?

Your last two statements are easily flipped around. It’s more accurate that women are dumping longtime husbands, than men are dumping fat hausfraus. Divorce rates drop off rapidly the older the marriage is. IOW, the longer you are married, the greater the chance you’ll stay married.

Why do women even care what their poor, overworked, feminized, beta husbands want or feel anyway? Aren’t women all about alpha, excitement and hot six pack washboard abs? As long as the law is on your side and you can divorce your husband for cash and prizes, who cares about the husband? (That’s what you REALLY want to say, right, Tracey?)

You are making the assumption that most men love and want their wives. This isn’t usually or even often true. From what I’ve seen, the 7 year-itch has become the 2 year itch these days and monogamy is very unnatural for most (if not, all) men.

And: You are making the assumption that most women love and want their husbands. This isn’t usually or even often true. From what I’ve seen, the 7 year itch has become the 2 year itch for women (if they husband isnt’ standing up for himself). Monogamy is very unnatural for all women. Women are naturally hypergamous, meaning they can always get a better man, and feel disappointed when they finally have to make a choice and pick one, and stick with him.

glad to see there is chatter on here that is attempting to be healing and constructive,
however i do see a bit of overall woman slandering, which to some degree feels great inside to all men including myself, but here is my only advice and 2 cents.

god has built us an imperfect world, one in which paradoxically every human is striving for perfection, and when it turns out that things go wrong all the time we blame one another.
instead we don’t see the fact of life between man and woman, he has placed us here to ensure there is plenty of humans on this planet (which he loves and fashioned in the likeness of himself)

but the creator had no other choice most likely than ensure healthy babies by creating a world in which we are attracted to the most desireable mate according to genetic markers, and couple that fact with the fact a woman is never completely satisfied nor happy in her current situation.
and a man is never happy with the amount of sex ever

and the end result is a planet covered in his most loved and cherished creation humans

Wild Child, I have to take some exception to what you assert. God did not create us an imperfect world at all. It was completely perfect and all in it was Holy and completely in submission to His will up to that time when man – Adam and Eve – invited sin to enter. Ever since that time things have been deteriorating. Mens desires are no longer in submission to God’s will. Women desire to dominate their mates. Just read Genesis and it tells that story very plainly. Many children are produced as a result of unions which God never intended to happen. But God in His sovereignty allows mankind to have the freedom to follow His will, or not. God can and does work to make everything glorify Him. Ephesians 2:38 tells us this. And God can and does provide blessings for each of us, whether our parents were folllowing His will or not. God is that good. Let us all hope and pray to have the desire and wisdom, which only comes from God, to follow His Holy and perfect will.

The choice is surely ours, to strive to be like him or not, and original sin is in all of our hearts and minds from that day. now that being understood how will we as a people compensate for that.
cause doubtful it will change. I don’t question how beautiful the world was before this incident with the apple, because it is extremely beautiful to this day. In my view god has tasked us with the awesome power to create his masterpiece, (a new born) not only that but we need to raise it well and healthy and in close contact with the creator himself, and in the process we are to provide love, sex, emotional support, to another beautiful being in this world (our spouse). so we have at most two people we need to love unconditionally by his standards.

some people can’t or won’t be up to that task, human imperfection,
think how close that is to world peace, but so far away, everyone loves 2 people unconditionally nobody in the world is left without love
we as a people are that close to perfection if we could keep our word we wouldn’t be on this blog
so will it change?

and my only answer is “be the change we are wanting to see in this world”

my opinion only, is yes we have what it takes to be like the master one day, perfect.
I think he approves of our efforts currently however feeble the attempts.

Most divorces are initiated by women. The popular stereotype of the middle-aged man dumping his wife is largely myth. Half of all men are divorced by middle age, with the breakups almost always initiated by the wives and taking the men by surprise.

Men marry and express love in ways you do not, can not, or refuse to comprehend. Deti has repeatedly discussed the issues. But fear reinforces your false beliefs. Logic cannot help you with this.

Wild child,

A straw army, indeed. As well, you demean mens discussion as chatter, instead of respecting a rational discussion using logic, statistics, and facts. No fault divorce has wrecked the family and will wreck western civilisation. But why consider the bigger issues? MPK exposes a number of your deceptive ‘logical’ fallacies. But feel free to continue posting blithe statements about the condition of mankind. Highly amusing.

“Men marry and express love in ways you do not, can not, or refuse to comprehend.”

My dad worked for 33 years in the insurance industry. I could tell he was OK with it, but he didn’t love it. He achieved some success and could make a good living at it, and that’s why he kept at it. He was alpha in his job, but pretty beta at home.

As I grew older I could tell just how much it took out of him. I had just married and he decided to retire. He told me “I’ve made a living, I didn’t get rich. Your youngest sister’s done with college now, and I got her through. I’m done. I can’t do it anymore. I just can’t.”

He would never have done it — COULD never have done it — were it not for the love and sense of responsibility he had for my mom and sisters and me. He wanted to marry and have a family, and he was willing to do whatever it took to care for them. My mom has never left him and never took his children from him. He really didn’t have much else in his life other than work and family, and that was all he needed. But if mom had left him and taken us, or if he had never married at all, I know for certain he would never have stayed in it.

“”You read this sort of thing and shake your head. I simply cannot fathom why American men agree to get married. Ever. It’s like playing Russian roulette with 5 loaded chambers. It’s been almost two generations of full bore feminism now. How long do you need to get the simple notion of “no”?””…

BRAVO!……..This goes for Canadian wimminz as well!…..I have been preaching this to younger men for 20 years now!…….When I was 23 a 58 year old “very successful” stock broker had a talk with myself and friends.He called it “How To Commit Financial Suicide”…..Best talk I have ever had.He explained the “Femi-Nazi laws” to us.Told us about our friends that are going to lose everything that they have…and then some!! He was 110% correct! ……I checked out all the laws….he was correct…..I dumped my fiance….got a vasectomy……and have NEVER! had a serious girlfriend since…..that was 25 years ago!……I only “sport-fuck” them……and there is a never ending supply!..I have never “shacked-up” …nor will I ever!….The friends from 25 years ago……lost everything…..paid alimony….child support….legal bills…etc…etc.!……I am glad I listened!…..I have no respect for women….or the laws that protect them!….”anything that bleeds for 5 days and does not die?…cannot be trusted”….Fuck them!….they are idiots & losers!

Really?………..ever wonder why Jesus and his disciples were never married?……..a good question to ponder.They were smarter than that!…..They knew women to be the “downfall of man”….the Garden of Eden proves this!………and I do not believe in Jesus as you so called “Christians” do…I am Jewish!…..Go figure!

Really?…………why don’t you do a little research on “Christianity” ……..Adolf Hitler was a Christian….as well as all his henchmen ….did you know that?……….Why don’t you do a little bit of research on the history of the Vatican……most of the Popes that have ruled from “St.Peter’s Chair”…are the most vile,ruthless murdering tyrants the world has ever seen…….Ever heard of “Crusades” and “Inquisitions”???……maybe you should do a little research about what you believe in!………… So as long as you support “Christianity”……you are also a tyrant in my eyes!……..The “Christian” is an ENEMY of the Jew!

Mark, Goodness man! Christians have never asserted that they were perfect. But your examples of Christians were far from being good ones. It isn’t fair to judge all Christians by men like Hitler and his buddies, or the guys in the Vatican and the crusades. If those men had truly been following Christian principles they would not have been doing what they did. As for the disciples, some of them actually were married and their families also followed Jesus, along with a number of other women who were not married. The fact is that Christ’s loyal followers were focussed on the kingdom of God instead of all of the other things that worldly people focus on. That includes marriage. That all being said, I would have to agree that the laws of most places are heavily tilted in favor of women, and can be abused to take advantage of men. This is just a manifestation of the fact that men who leave their families need to provide for them, as these men bear a good part of the responsibility for creating the family in the first place. And sadly, many men who leave their families are deadbeat bums who refuse to take responsibility for their actions. What would you think of a God who created us all knowing that we would allow sin to enter this world, then would refuse to send us a Savior? God is not a dead beat Dad. He sent Jesus Christ, His only Son to live a perfect life and then in spite of His innocence to die on the cross to take our rightful punishment so that we might have eternal life with Him in heaven.

Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery – Adolf Hitler

One is either a Christian or a German. You can’t be both. – Adolf Hitler

Alfred Rosenbergs thirty-point program…The National Church is determined to exterminate foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year 800.On the altars there must be nothing but Mein Kampf and to the left of the altar a sword.

Martin Bormann…National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable

Dr. Hans Kerrl, Hitler’s Minister for Church Affairs…Dr. Zoellner and Count Galen have tried to make clear to me that Christianity consists in faith in Christ as the Son of God. That makes me laugh…No, True Christianity is represented by the party

The Roman Catholic Church has murdered more Jews than any other institution in the world…..The RCC is in fact the biggest murdering institution that the world has ever known! Also,The Nazis that escaped to South America after WW2 were indeed aided by the Vatican! The RCC is probably the most ant-semitic institution in the world and always has been.You Christians have been led to believe it is the Muslims which are our enemies also.But,any good Orthodox Jew knows it is the Bishop of Rome!

Mark, Communism killed (conservative estimate) 100 million people in Asia during the 20th century. Feminism has killed 60 million babies (abortions) in the US during the same time frame. Catholicism is hardly in the same league.
Some Nazis that got to South America were helped by the Vatican. Most got there on their own – lots of submarines made it there rather than come back to a devastated Europe and POW camps. Not all Nazis were bad – Oskar Schinder was a Nazi.
There were many Catholic priests that protected Jews – Bishop Nicolini was one, and he had the Pope’s backing. Show me a Moslem that protected Jews.

Prove me wrong, Mark. I see no way of convincing you of the truth, but I can laugh at your stupidity and BS. Prove me wrong, or watch me laugh at you every time you post.

Just reread part of the main article here. It strikes me that those women who simply are not in love with their good, decent, and loving husbands are simply spoiled rotten. They probably were that way as children as well. Many women in that category (and dare I say certian playboy men) have no clue what it takes to be a provider to them. And it takes a lot of effort and mental and emotional toil, simply put. Unfortunately that quite often leaves little or no time or energy for the husband to provide for and feed his wife’s emotional needs, which is iffy at best even if the poor guy has the capacity to comprehend what the spoiled brat he married really wants. Unfortunately she usually cannot articulate it in any terms the guy would understand and she is not trying in the first place. She just wants Favio to sweep her off her feet on a daily basis. The reality is she usually wants more than any man (with the possible exceptions of Bill Clinton and John Edwards) can provide. They want Jesus Christ with benefits.

“This is just a manifestation of the fact that men who leave their families need to provide for them, as these men bear a good part of the responsibility for creating the family in the first place. And sadly, many men who leave their families are deadbeat bums who refuse to take responsibility for their actions.”

True, for those few men who decide to leave their wives for younger, hotter, tighter. They are the exception, not the rule. Observer is right that in most cases, it’s the women getting the divorces from men who want to be responsible.

Women are demanding that men have all the marital accountability and responsibility, but with no rights. Men are saying “well, that doesn’t look like a good deal.” If women want men to be responsible, then the men have to have their marital rights.

Mark: Really?…………why don’t you do a little research on “Christianity” ……..Adolf Hitler was a Christian….as well as all his henchmen ….did you know that?……….

Adolf Hitler was a GENTILE, not a “Christian”. Please do not make the typical Jewish mistake of assuming that every white gentile is, by default, a Christian. Christianity is not a hereditary identity, it is something that one must personally embrace. Clearly Hitler did NOT embrace it, even though he was raised in it. A childhood baptism, a Christmas tree (which is pagan anyway), and even a church upbringing do not make one a Christian. As they put it in the Matrix, the problem is choice: “choose ye this day, whom ye shall serve”.

Surely you, as an Orthodox Jew, are disgusted by Reform “Jews” who appoint lesbian rabbis and endorse abortion and sodomy? These people are ethnically Jews, but by no stretch of the imagination are they Jews by practice. It’s the same with us.

Learn who your friends are. As the world gets crazier, devout Jews and devout Christians will have more and more in common with each other, and less and less in common with the world at large.

No argument there are nowadays many women who either leave their husbands or make it so difficult that the husband leaves. Men do need their marital rights. I don’t see how not marrying gives men any protection either though. I always thought that true monagamy was the least risky living arrangment overall It does require that a guy select a girl for his spouse who isn’t a spoiled brat, and then that he treat her well. There aren’t any guarantees in life though. Many women are still afflicted by the same weakness that befell Eve. They are sinful, jealous of the natural headship of the husband (especially and rightfully so when hubbie is a jerk), and can get greedy in the relationship. You can read in the Bible how when confronted by Adam’s query as to didn’t God say not to eat of that tree, Eve just repeated the lie that Satan had given her. Women are still doing that, and unfortunately men are still falling for those lies as Adam did. Here’s one: “You are supposed to accept me as I am, because that’s what Jesus does.” That’s a false premise. Jesus may accept us as we are, but he doesn’t tolerate us staying that way. Like I said, “They want Jesus Christ with benefits.”

Reichs Chancellor Hitler was not a Christian! He was a Roman Catholic – but the number of deaths attributed to him have been sorely exagerrated (by about Six Million, I’d say).
———————————————————-
Huh?

From Retrenched:
“I’ve read that Hitler professed Catholicism*, though if he did it was probably a political move on his part. The only religion he seemed to be genuinely interested in was mysticism and astrology.”

This seems remarkably similar to Bill Clinton, who was supposedly a Baptist. The only religion he seemed to have a genuine interest in was women other than his wife and politics.

“At the Eichmann Nazi War Crimes Trial in 1961, Jewish scholar Jeno Levai testified that the Bishops of the Catholic Church “intervened again and again on the instructions of the Pope.” In 1968, he wrote that “the one person (Pius XII) who did more than anyone else to halt the dreadful crime and alleviate its consequences, is today made the scapegoat for the failures of others.” In “The Secret War Against the Jews” in 1994, Jewish writers John Loftus and Mark Aarons write that “Pope Pius XII probably rescued more Jews than all the Allies combined.”

“As a popular philosopher has shrewdly observed, the objections to polygamy do not come from women.” – H.L. Mencken

Not only do they not object to polygamy, they promote it, in its various forms, now rather openly and publicly.

I suppose it was inevitable that giving women the vote would lead to a Mormon Pimp-Daddy-in-Chief, or almost.

In this style of polygamy, women are in fact monogamous, just multiple ones all to the same male. Because such a male faces virtually no sperm competition, we know from the other primates with breeding systems like this that they have males where the testicles are a very small percentage of body mass. Human males are different than this, so this is not “natural” for us, whether it’s happened before, or is in the bible, or whatever. A system where males are being urged to Man Up! and “grow some balls” and other such nonsense is a dysfunctional one, not because of some problem with the males (the symptom), but because of the behavior of the females!

By way of contrast with a system where wives wish their husbands would cheat, among the Ababua a wife “to prove the great affection which she feels for her husband will, during his absence on a journey, buy him a young and pretty girl whom she presents to him on his return”. (Briffault) And she probably earned the money for this purchase herself. Ha!

“I suppose it was inevitable that giving women the vote would lead to a Mormon Pimp-Daddy-in-Chief, or almost.”

Haha yup. That’s the choice Americans have this election: Corporate-kleptocracy led by the Mormon pimp-daddy in chief, or corporate-kleptocracy led by the long legged mack daddy with his ball buster wife.

““As a popular philosopher has shrewdly observed, the objections to polygamy do not come from women.” – H.L. Mencken

Not only do they not object to polygamy, they promote it, in its various forms, now rather openly and publicly.”

This comment seems to require one to accept an implicit presumption that women don’t like sex, at least not that much, and especially not for the pure sport of it. And that they prefer to mostly live in an autonomous manner, devoid of any accountability from a male head-of – household, which in cases of polygamy where only one husband is married to multiple wives would be the case. The women can consort with each other to set the rules for the husband and then make them stick because they don’t seem to care about having the guy all to themselves. In my case that wouldn’t work at all because my wife would kill all the other women, or drive them away, and then give me a dire warning about seeing any of them at all for any reason ever again.

Not sure where you got “This comment seems to require one to accept an implicit presumption that women don’t like sex, at least not that much, and especially not for the pure sport of it.” from, MPK. What’s a non sequitur, only in the other direction?

Would your wife really do all that badass stuff, or is it just bluster? (rhetorical question)

One of the consequences of liberating women has been the amount of mate poaching by them which then ensues, of women trying to take other women’s men. Think Rielle Hunter going for the Man Prize belonging (nominally) to the late Mrs. John Edwards. The former is a pop feminist celebrity under the “all’s fair, etc.” clause. The latter didn’t even try to scratch her eyes out or pull her hair. Upset? Yes. Violent? No. Female-on-female physical intimidation or murder of the sort you’re alluding to is rare. Perhaps because the man now always gets the blame, and then the jealous wife runs him over with the car, or hires hit men to knock him off – more possible cash and prizes that way.

Anyway, Briffault reported on the acute absence of jealousy among wives in polygamous societies: “The number of a man’s wives is the measure of his respectability.” Thus women’s promotion of polygamy is a form of self-promotion: “In uncultured societies women are the chief upholders of polygamy”.

Briffault reported on the acute absence of jealousy among wives in polygamous societies: “The number of a man’s wives is the measure of his respectability.” Thus women’s promotion of polygamy is a form of self-promotion: “In uncultured societies women are the chief upholders of polygamy”.

“Would your wife really do all that badass stuff, or is it just bluster? (rhetorical question)”

No she wouldn’t. It was just bluster. She would just leave me. Then she would call her sister who is a VP in the company where I am employed and they would concoct some evil scheme for making my life a living hell, all without terminating my employment, since the then-ex would still need most of my salary as she hasn’t got a degree of any kind and so is practically unemployable other than as a baby sitter. But I never thought I would have any desire for a polygamous marriage in the first place, and don’t now. One wife is definitely enough. Sometimes I even think one wife is actually too much. Then sometimes I find the grass appears greener across the fence but I don’t dare go over to find out. Most certianly I would be wrong about that. I just suffer through it, figuring that is just the treacherous flesh punishing me. My bride has numerous health issues which interfere with her mainatining an attractive body image, so there’s that to deal with. But the worst part is all those loose nerve ends in her brain, which is pretty much in common with every other female. I think it’s like throwing a giant ball of steel wool at the power transformer on the power pole in your backyard, if you know what I mean.

“Men marry and express love in ways you do not, can not, or refuse to comprehend.”

My dad worked for 33 years in the insurance industry. I could tell he was OK with it, but he didn’t love it. He achieved some success and could make a good living at it, and that’s why he kept at it. He was alpha in his job, but pretty beta at home.

As I grew older I could tell just how much it took out of him. I had just married and he decided to retire. He told me “I’ve made a living, I didn’t get rich. Your youngest sister’s done with college now, and I got her through. I’m done. I can’t do it anymore. I just can’t.”

He would never have done it — COULD never have done it — were it not for the love and sense of responsibility he had for my mom and sisters and me. He wanted to marry and have a family, and he was willing to do whatever it took to care for them. My mom has never left him and never took his children from him. He really didn’t have much else in his life other than work and family, and that was all he needed. But if mom had left him and taken us, or if he had never married at all, I know for certain he would never have stayed in it.

This is how the vast majority of men approach marriage – working their asses off at high stress, demanding, low reward and often dangerous jobs that suck the life out of them. It is also a perspective that the vast majority of married women do not and perhaps can not appreciate. I know my now legally ex-wife did/could not and is only now realizing the nightmare her world is going to become post-divorce, despite the fact that I’m getting soaked (paying combined alimony/child support of $36K per year (pre-tax)) on a gross of $100K and having the kids over half the time. While she works part-time and drives her new convertible.

Haha yup. That’s the choice Americans have this election: Corporate-kleptocracy led by the Mormon pimp-daddy in chief, or corporate-kleptocracy led by the long legged mack daddy with his ball buster wife. (ybm)

The Obummer campaign is now running a get-out-the-youth-vote ad with an earnest looking girl-woman going on about how you want to do it the first time with someone really special. It’s effing surreal. Like, how would she know?

From hurting:
“This is how the vast majority of men approach marriage – working their asses off at high stress, demanding, low reward and often dangerous jobs that suck the life out of them. It is also a perspective that the vast majority of married women do not and perhaps can not appreciate.”

As a young guy, I never dated. That includes high school and college. I’m sure my dad thought I was gay. I just couldn’t stand to be around most of the girls I knew because they were silly idiots. Those were the attractive ones. The smart girls I knew were more like the guys I knew. Sort of boyish. So I never had much desire to be one on one with any of them, except in a sexual way, which was forbidden. When I was a junior in college, a colleague of my dad’s introduced me to his daughter. She was my age, but had somehow apparently finished her college at some liberal arts school. We visited at a Christmas party and I thought she was pretty sweet. I should also say she was a beautiful girl. After that party I asked my dad what he thought of her. He stupidly and blunlty responded, “I think she’s looking for a husband.” You should NEVER say that to a young never married guy – if you are trying to encourage him. That next, and last tiem I saw that girl, she was with her brothers headed back to their home town a few hours away. She tried to get my attention but I was too freaked out to even look at her. I had that picture of marriage in my mind, the one quoted above. I never understood why a guy would want to sign up to work his ass off for 30 years just so he can give some woman the right to spend all of the money he earns on her priorities. So that girl walked out of my life forever, so far anyway. That was 38 years ago. Now with public records on the internet I’ve looked her up. She has had one marital disaster after another. Three marriages, three divorces. Two protective orders against her husbands. Her first marriage began only 5 months after I met her, and lasted all of 22 months. Her husband in that marriage was 11 years older than she was (32 vs. 21). The guy divorced her and remarried another sweet young thing only 2 months after they divorced. He has had two other marriages since then. Her second husband lived out in the sticks in Oklahoma, and still lives there. I can only imagine what that gal went through having her four kids with him out there in the wilderness. She finally filed for divorce in Oklahoma City. I imagine he was mistreating her and/or her children out in the woods there in that small hamlet and no one would listen to her story there. So she went to the big city to take care of the problem. I’ve had my regrets over that girl. But perhaps I would have just been her first of many. it is impossible to know now.

“Bullet. Dodged.”
Yeah I agree. As much of a sweetheart as she was when we visited that one and only evening, I never really knew the girl. I knew her dad and brother much better. She was likely in sales mode, as many young women are when they are looking around. (Especially when they go get some liberal arts degree which is almost totally unemployable, as if they really wanted to be “employed” in the first place. I can only imagine that she might have been willing to continue in that same sales mode for the 2 more years it took me to graduate and find a job. All the while playing me against the jerk she eventually married. If that had occurred I’d have pulled out of it pretty quickly.) So I’ve had these mixed feelings going on. It’s rather strange how I was able to totally forget that girl right after I learned that she was married (the first time) but now after 38 years I am suddenly remembering details about our meeting that I dare say I could never recall from when I met my wife, 14 years later. ‘Couple of examples are how when we were first introduced I held my hand out to her and apologized that it was dirty, then she just smiled and said it’s okay. Then her dress – it was white, long (down to the floor), and had a wide collar at the top. The skirt part had some patches of purple. She had beautiful shoulder length brown hair, and brown eyes. Weird. ‘Hope my wife never expects me to remember that kind of detail about her. Of course now I have also been able to locate her on Facebook. She still looks the same as she did back then, only she’s a grandmother now. I will note that her pic is pretty small and fuzzy though. Danger signal – her FB page says she is single and interested in men, but there’s no record of her actually being divorced from her last husband of record. You have to wonder about that lady. Someday I’ll know. But it is pretty dissappointing either way.

She has had one marital disaster after another. Three marriages, three divorces. Two protective orders against her husbands.

Quoting Van Rooinek’s Rules:

* Never date a woman who has, or has ever had, a restraining order against an ex. (Either she’s trouble, or he is.)

Since she’s filed protective orders TWICE, we can surmise that either (a) she picked violent men twice (or drove them to violence), or that (b) she’s one of those witches that abuses the restraining order system to hurt men.

Restraining orders…..yes, I agree. I looked up her exes to find that in their previous marriages (they’ve each had multiple also) their previous wives also filed protective orders. Perhaps that is just standard operating procedure in Oklahoma. Looking through their court records I also noted that this lady has had lots of real property-related court activity as well, including a foreclosure and several issues with loans. I am thinking my dad was right about that girl in telling me “She’s looking for a husband.”, as well as my being right to ignore her after learning that. It appears that she’s a walking disaster area, and her selections of mates, aside from her consideration of …me…shows it. As you have said, “Bullet, dodged.”

I don’t know for sure about this next assertion, others may comment. I have to wonder whether this lady was consciously leaning that way all along, or if her first marriage experience drove her to what she accomplished in her following two. I am convinced that her first hubbie was a bonafide jerk, as his record shows he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, sustain a marriage for any reasonable period of time. His first (with her) was 22 months followed within 2 months by his second, which lasted 31 months. I suspect he was playing around on his first wife while they were married. He waited a few years then married a third time. That one lasted 6 years. Last I heard the guy is living in China. I imagine he finally found himself a subservient Chinese girl who would wipe his rear, or perform other personal services, in a respectful and enthusiastic manner, upon his command.

I wish my husband would cheat. I will never be unkind to him, withhold sex or try to steer him into having an affair. I think it most unlikely that he ever will- I work very hard on our marriage. I make all the money, do almost all the domestics and still manage to keep in good shape. He on the other hand is a lazy “housespouse” who does no housework and when he is left with the children lets them scream while he goes on his computer doing his own thing. He has also gained a LOT of weight since we married. Sometimes I think he does this because he knows I am trapped now.

I will continue to work hard at keeping the marriage going because as a Christian I am commanded to- but if he decides to have an affair and release me from that obligation then more fool him. He will not even see my retreating back for dust and frankly I will not feel even the slightest bit bad about it. It will never happen though, because when the wife REALLY makes an effort with the marriage normal men almost never play away.

How are you “trapped”, Elaine? You make all the money. He does nothing, according to your own version of things. Divorce him, take the kids, and pay him a little alimony, and he’s out of your life forever. Simple. You have the law, the courts, the culture and society on your side. What and who is on his side? Certainly not you.

If he is as you describe, your husband will never cheat, mostly because he will never have the opportunity to do so. He’s about as unattractive as rotting onions and sewer gas. He’s fat, unemployed, unambitious, an absentee parent, and lazy.

Dalrock is 100% correct on this post. I have even showed my wife what she is doing in trying to undermine our marriage as described in the post above and it doesn’t even phase her and this from a “Christian” woman that went to “Christian” schools and who’s brother is a pastor. Oh yeah they’ll even get jealous for awhile but boy you better be not insecure about anything and the rationalization hampster ALWAYS has an excuse .My neighbor has a similar story, “Christian” wife totally acting unbiblical even in church and she divorced him unfortunately he made it even worse by remarrying your typical sociopathic gold digging Philippino woman, I will not make that mistake if things don’t work out.

I don’t know if anyone who previously posted will see this now, but, call me what you will (slut, whore, home wrecker… all names I have called myself, believe me) I have cheated. Not once. Many times.
I honestly couldn’t understand WHY I would do something like this to my wonderful, nice, easy going husband. So I began searching, and lo and behold (as many of you, men and women have found) there are a LOT of women doing this, and wanting their husbands to take the blame. We have this moral image to uphold, we women, and we want our men to look like the ones at fault. And of course, they are, to some degree. A marriage DOES take two, after all. Men, whose wives cheated, please don’t pretend that you didn’t have some of the fault in this, as well. If ALL needs were met, there wouldn’t be need for cheating. That means if all HER needs were met, and if all HIS needs were met. I have come to the realization, though, that we women need to take responsibility, too, because for generations we’ve always been the “innocent” ones. And now we aren’t. Our image is so important to us, though, so we need to “get over ourselves” and admit our failures and wrong doings.

I just read two books by Michelle Langley, the Women’s Infidelities, 1 and 2. And finally! I understand. In MY case, and I only speak for mine… I married young, a “devout Christian, goody-two shoes, virgin.” By our third or 4th year of marriage, I was not sexually satisfied. The problem? I actually felt ashamed to talk to my husband about it. I didn’t want, didn’t know how, to tell him what I wanted, what pleased me (because, as a previous pure girl, how would I know I’d want oral sex?????) My fault in our breakdown is expecting my husband to read my mind and just “know” when I was happy/unhappy, and not only in the bed, but around the house, in my job, etc.
I’m not excusing any of my behavior, and I’m not excusing his. I know that my divorce will hurt my kids, and that I’ll be sinning against God. Surely, surely, God’s mercy and grace can extend to me.

Women, if you are in the same situations, read these books, it will give you insight on even the hormonal reasons we act the way we do.

Men, read these books to understand women in general. If it isn’t too late to save your marriage, this wealth of information may be JUST what you need!!!

You acknowledge your responsibility but put some of the blame for your cheating on your husband. Out of curiosity, what do you think was his part of the “blame”?

Perhaps your husband’s nice, easy going, wonderful ways were part of it. Maybe it was his inability to tell when you were unhappy. But let us be PERFECTLY clear about something here – All that might explain your behavior. However, none of that in any way, shape, manner or form excuses YOUR decision to cheat on him. None of that in any way justifies your behavior. The blame and responsibility for YOUR decision to cheat and YOUR behavior rests squarely on your shoulders. It is yours, and yours alone. You acted on your feelings. You made decisions based not on facts or truth, but on feelings.

Women are unfaithful because they do not respect their husband/ man and don’t fear losing him. Forgiving her feeds into the no respect no fear of loss.

Are women responsible for their infidelity? On the one had the world and the law say they are moral agents, capable of discerning right from wrong and fully mature adults. On their other hand is personal observations which point to them not being moral agents, incapable of discerning right from wrong in any meaningfully way…… I do like the concept of individual responsibility applied to all but I’m not sure that is something women do

If Traci’s husband is a Christian, he’ll forgive her. He will also immediately divorce her, because their marriage is effectively over.

Once a woman makes the decision to cheat sexually and follows through on it, she’s checked out of the marriage. She no longer feels anything for him, at least sexually. She cheated many times by her own admission. Traci blames part of this on her husband. Using the hamsterlator, what she’s really saying is:

“if only my (soon to be ex) husband had just “gotten it” as Rollo would say, if only he had known to take care of me sexually, if only he had been hotter, if only he had not been so nice and easy going, I might not have cheated on him.”

This is just pure hamsterbation/rationalizing. She knows what she did is wrong. She knows full well she cheated and what she did was morally wrong. She’s contrite (or at least as contrite as she can be), she knows she hurt her husband and her kids. She’ll take part of the blame; she just doesn’t want ALL of it. So long as others are also culpable, she’s OK with it.

So I think the answer is yes. Women can be responsible and ARE responsible for their conduct. God held Eve fully responsible for her sin in the Garden of Eden. He didn’t treat her as having no “guilty mind”. God told her her sin, and then meted out the consequences – which women bear to this day.

I want to clarify something… I do not excuse my behavior in any way. My choices were mine. My infidelity was mine. If any blame falls to my husband, it isn’t for MY action, but his. A marriage takes two. I think that when a third person has entered the marriage, it’s because the marriage was already falling apart. If the marriage isn’t strong, there are reasons for it. My lack of communication, his lack of presence, emotionally. I have other faults, as does he. I wasn’t trying to say that he “caused” me to have affairs. I’m saying that I wasn’t happy and that because of that I searched for happiness somewhere else, be that right or wrong (which of course, is wrong.)
On another note, it’s funny that this conversation reached my inbox today, because my husband and I spoke just yesterday. I’ve had the most difficult night and day today that I’ve had… perhaps ever. If any good came of it, it’s that we both, for the first time in 20 years, were completely honest with each other. He even recognized his faults, his blame, before I mentioned them. He wants to start over, as of today, a fresh start, with no more secrets, no more lies. He is willing to forgive all… as a the man of God that he is. He’s willing to sacrifice what it takes to be a more “hands on” husband, and do things with me, spend time with me, actually plan dates (in all of our time together, even dating, he has never ONCE scheduled a date…I’ve done all the planning and prep, so he’s going to take the initiative.)

So now, it all lies with me. And what I want. The thing is, I just don’t know if I really want him. (I know, why wouldn’t I want a man like him, right?) So, what do I want? I want to be happy. The answer? One I already know, that no MAN will make me happy. People will tell you, follow your heart, but the heart is deceitful. People will tell you, happiness is found within you, but even that is not entirely true. “Happy is the man who trusts in the Lord.” Now, stealing a line of a song from Point of Grace, I just need enough faith for what I already know.

I wish you the best of luck. There are no easy ways forward. However I’d like to point out a few things.

1. I think you cheated on your husband because you weren’t sexually attracted to him. Almost all the time, a woman cheats because she no longer is attracted to her husband and wants sexual satisfaction elsewhere. At that point, there’s really no marriage to be saved. You and he need to fix that if your marriage has any hope of salvage.

2. The problems that led you to cheat really don’t have anything to do with your husband’s “lack of emotional presence” or his failure to be “hands on” or failure to spend time with you or plan things for you to do together. They have to do with the fact that you didn’t find him physically attractive.

3. You spoke truth when you said “The thing is, I just don’t know if I really want him.” For you to ask that question is to answer it. If you wanted your husband, that question would never have entered your mind, much less be transmitted to your fingers to type it out in a combox on a blog populated with strangers. You – and I — already know the answer: You don’t want him. If you did, you would never have cheated on your husband multiple times.

If any good came of it, it’s that we both, for the first time in 20 years, were completely honest with each other. He even recognized his faults, his blame, before I mentioned them. He wants to start over, as of today, a fresh start, with no more secrets, no more lies. He is willing to forgive all… as a the man of God that he is. He’s willing to sacrifice what it takes to be a more “hands on” husband, and do things with me, spend time with me, actually plan dates (in all of our time together, even dating, he has never ONCE scheduled a date…I’ve done all the planning and prep, so he’s going to take the initiative

I have just one question: why didn’t you try, seriously try, to fix any of this before you cheated? If you had mustered the courage to admit to your husband that the path your marriage was taking was turning your affections and sexual interest away from him, you might well have spurred him to change.

If you can’t admit now that you didn’t try to change course when things went awry the first time, the second time won’t be much better. You might feel guiltier when it ends again, but that’s it.

Unless you address the lack of biological attraction, this is not going to end well. You’ll either cheat again, or divorce him because you just cannot bring yourself to attraction again.

This is because almost all the time, when a woman loses sexual attraction for her husband and has sex with another man, she can’t be attracted to her husband again. Hubby goes in the friend zone, “I love him but I’m not in love with him” and all that.

You’re missing the root issue, which is lack of sexual attraction. Frankly, because you’ve already crossed the infidelity Rubicon, I doubt it can be fixed. But, best of luck nonetheless.

“expecting my husband to read my mind and just know when I was happy/unhappy”
Yeah. The fucking bastard wasn’t reading your mind, as he was supposed to. He deserved it.

“He even recognized his faults, his blame, before I mentioned them.”
Hi blame is TO RECOGNIZE HE HAS ANY BLAME IN THIS.
This is exactly the reason why you cheated on him.
His Beta behavior… willing to bend over to the most humiliating and frustrating situations, just to make his wife will…
He will hold someone else’s cock as it penetrates you, if you ask him.

There is nothing you can do at this point.
Either he’ll kick you out because of your slutty behavior, or you’ll kick him out because of his beta behavior. The latter is far most likely.

Good luck.

You children will pay a huge price for this. HUGE.
They’ll likely become drug addict, dysfunctional in the society, suicidal and/or chronic depressed.

Well, you always have the option to suck it up and be unhappy for the rest of your life, for the sake of your children. But that is not really an option for a woman. Because your happiness is the MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WHOLE WORLD.

@robinbreak: Yes, but there IS a difference between being blunt and being mean. You may not like what Traci has to say (I’m right there with you), but recall that she likely DOESN’T UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEM.

Don’t be a mangina, but don’t throw salt in her face either. She came here wanting a man’s perspective. We want her to learn, to add to the growing number of red pill women if possible. Throwing salt in her face is more likely to make her return to worshiping the hamster than to learn anything.

Basically, CALM DOWN. You sound more like one of those 9-11 Truthers than someone with a brain right now.

I’ve been trying to make women understand what they were doing by reasoning and being polite, and explaining things with calm and compassion my whole life.
That has NEVER worked.
Women do not understand reason. They do not behave with logic. They will say “yes you’re right” and then a minute after keep behaving the wrong way.

On the other side, if I raise my voice, be authoritative and blunt (to the extreme of mean), they will “try” to argue back and sometimes even cry. BUT they will tend to understand, or at least submit and behave.
Weird right? But what can I do? It is what it is.

Robinbreak: re: “To destroy a marriage takes JUST ONE.”
Do you seriously believe that? So, you’re saying that if I would NEVER have committed adultery the marriage would survive? That’s funny, because I think that if a spouse’s needs (not only sexual needs, mind you, but emotional and even physical as well) are met, there’d be no need to search elsewhere. I completely admit that my fault, prior to the affairs, was that I did not communicate my needs to him. No excuse, my fault, completely. Yet, in the beginning, middle and end, I wasn’t happy. And no, NOOOO, my happiness ISN”T the most important thing in the world, but to imply that my happiness doesn’t matter at all diminishes me as a woman, as a PERSON. I bent over backwards to try to please my husband in the beginning: to make HIS happiness my main priority. When my children were born, THEY also became my priorities. For YEARS, and YEARS I put THEIR NEEDS ALWAYS BEFORE MY OWN!!!! And I still do, as far as my girls are concerned: they see ME at their recitals, at their games. They hear ME say their prayers with them at night. They see ME doing the things around the house. I’m the one they come to when their friends have been mean to them (little girls can be so catty, changing best friends every day.) I am the one who listens as they act out their “plays” they’ve written. I am the one who teaches them about the every day matters of life. Where do they see daddy? At the computer. Do you NOT think that after YEARS of always thinking of others before myself I COULD ask for some happiness????? Granted, I should have spoken to him, have him man up, and instead found “happiness” in other men, eventually. I’m not excusing myself, but I AM showing reasons why a marriage can fail, even BEFORE an infidelity. A man is commanded from the Lord to love his wife. Love is an action, not just a feeling. We women, if you look closly, are not called to “love” our husbands, but to respect them. Pretty hard to respect someone when you don’t feel loved by them… let’s NOT confuse true respect for obedience. A slave may obey his master, yet hold absolutely NO respect for him.

Not to say that I was a slave (except a slave to sin, as we all are at one point in our lives.)

Now, I remind you, my husband is a wonderful man, (sweet, generous, funny) but he has also always expected, and still expects, me to do everything for him. (it’s no wonder why we hear so many women say their husbands are an extra child!) Yes, in the beginning, I was the faithful little wife who kissed his feet when he came home. I cleaned up after him. I applied for his jobs. I scheduled his doctor appointments. I had sex every night with him, or whenever HE wanted, no matter if I’d worked a 50 hour week, came home and cooked and cleaned up after the meal, gave the baby a bath and put her to bed… and I really WAS tired, and maybe really DID have a headache, and didn’t feel like I could “get in the mood”… oh, and what? “honey, you didn’t shave your legs.” SERIOUSLY???? And men question why women begin to stop wanting sex with them, and find their mates “sexually unattractive.”

By the way: Where I come from, women are not a lower class citizen than a man, and we aren’t dogs to sit when we are told to sit, and hump when we are told to hump. To submit, at least biblically speaking, doesn’t mean to “behave” anyway… it means to follow his LEADERSHIP, not dictatorship, as is implied by your comment : BUT they will tend to understand, or at least submit and behave.

Your last post was hundreds of words turning your actions into your husbands “blame” again. You are just making excuses for your infidelity. The “get out of I’m a cheating whore” card because he didn’t pick up his socks.

Head over to Opera.com or some such place. They will fully back you decision to blame your husband for you deciding to jump on another man’s cock.

1. You are using your husband’s beta behavior, computer usage, and perceived slights about razor stubble to excuse and justify your adultery. You do blame your husband for your cheating.

2. Your failure to communicate your needs to your husband did not cause you to have the affairs. What caused the affairs was you deciding that you were not getting your “needs” met, and your deciding to have sex with other men.

3. So your husband spends time in front of a computer. What, you begrudge him time doing something he likes to do or needs to do?

4. It is crystal clear you have absolutely NO respect for your husband. You perceive he done you wrong, and you’re pissed as hell about it.

5. Your respect for your husband is in no way, shape or form conditioned on his love for you or whether you “feel” loved. Just as he is commanded to love you; you’re commanded to respect him. That respect is required whether he deserves it, whether he’s earned it, or whether you THINK he’s earned it.

6. A woman who is sexually attracted to a man will do anything for that man, anytime, and be ready for sex with him anytime. Your bellyaching about being tired, doing all the work, razor stubble, etc. are just smokescreen. If you were hot to have sex with him because he was attractive, you’d be wet for him after a 100 hour work week and taking care of 19 kids.

7. There’s something here you’re not telling us. There’s another side to this story that we’re not hearing. I will bet it is one of the following: (a) You refused him sex or told him on a regular basis you didn’t want sex. (b) You nagged and complained at him about this or that various thing(s). (c) You treated him with withering disrespect and seething contempt, and ridiculed him, publicly and privately.

Give it up, Traci. You are not going to come here spouting bullshit about how your husband isn’t a good father or plays computer or complains about sandpaper legs or biblical submission = doormat or how you carried all the water, and get sympathy from us. We’ve heard it all before from more articulate advocates than you.

Go back to your husband, throw yourself on his mercy, and pray he takes you back for the good of your children. You don’t get to demand happiness or that your husband change. You get to go back and hope to God you haven’t destroyed 4 other lives.

Your adultery happened because of YOU and YOUR CHOICES. No one else’s. YOURS and YOURS ALONE.

I’m done here. If you still don’t understand this, then you truly are lost.

Did you ever have sex with any men before you got married? (“sex with any men” means that your in any way came in contact with the man’s penis for the purpose of sexual gratification. It includes any act ending in the vernacular “-job”. I know that you say you were a goody two shoes virgin. But consider – did you ever “mess around” with other men before you married? It matters.)

How long have you been married?

Has he gained a significant amount of weight since you married?

Have you gained or lost a significant amount of weight since you married?

Could you live on your husband’s income if you quit your job?

Does your husband have any friends he visits/talks to/hangs out with on a regular basis?

How many different men did you have sex with after you got married?

When did the cheating start in relation to your marriage date?

For how long did you cheat?

Did you fall in love with any of the men you cheated with?

Is there any chance—any at all – that any of your adulterous paramours are the biological father(s) of your kid(s)?

You don’t need to answer those questions here. Just answer them to yourself.

Here’s where I’m going with this.

I’m guessing your husband is a beta schlub whom you like a lot, but you’re no longer in love with. He’s a bit pudgy, out of shape and withdrawn. He’s got no personality. He doesn’t interact with you very much. He’s not very sexually perceptive or adept. You suspect or know he’s spending a lot of time on that computer with internet porn. But you married him because he’s a nice guy; and he, unlike the other men you knew before him, was willing to marry you.

Here’s how I know this.

You don’t describe him as “fun” or “Sexy” or “attractive” or “loving”. You describe him as wonderful, nice, easy going, and caring. That’s how friends describe each other, not how wives describe husbands. You complain about his computer usage. You don’t want to have sex with him when he wants to have sex.

Reti: This last posting of yours, I appreciate, because I think you are actually trying to find a root cause… unlike other posts which have tried to belittle…

Traci, how old were you when you married your husband? 19 (I’m 40 now)

How old was he when you married? 26

Did you ever have sex with any men before you got married? (“sex with any men” means that your in any way came in contact with the man’s penis for the purpose of sexual gratification. It includes any act ending in the vernacular “-job”. I know that you say you were a goody two shoes virgin. But consider – did you ever “mess around” with other men before you married? It matters.) No. One boyfriend touched me once, I ended up breaking up.

How long have you been married? 20 years.

Has he gained a significant amount of weight since you married? Mmm, no not much. Maybe 15 or so .. (men and their great metabolisms.)

Have you gained or lost a significant amount of weight since you married? Gained and lost about 1000 pounds (gain 20 lose 10, gain 50, lose 40, etc). LOL. I’m currently below my wedding weight. But have been up to almost 200 pounds (believe it or not, he seemed to “want me” more when I was over 160 pounds than even now at 120)

Could you live on your husband’s income if you quit your job? No. I’m the “bread winner.” I make 2x him, and he has 2 jobs vs. my one.
Does your husband have any friends he visits/talks to/hangs out with on a regular basis? Not really… Not since we moved.

How many different men did you have sex with after you got married? Ok, because I’m looking for root causes this is the first time I’ve ever put the actual amount down and not minimizing the amount… If I count my first “affair” which did NOT include sex (we only kissed), and the second, which reached the “petting” stage, then it would be 7. And if I count a man that I’m “online” with (who happens to be my first boyfriend, 25 years ago, but haven’t seen…3000 miles apart) that would be 8 total. 5 with actual intercourse.

When did the cheating start in relation to your marriage date? the kisser and petter very soon after 4 years, and 4.5 years.

For how long did you cheat? Each one? Hmmm… different times. Longest was about 3-4 months.

Did you fall in love with any of the men you cheated with? Infatuated with a couple. The one I’m “online” with now has been going on for about 16 months… we’ve discussed marriage. Don’t know. I know I have strong feelings for him. Love? I think so. But really does someone like me even really know what love is????

Is there any chance—any at all – that any of your adulterous paramours are the biological father(s) of your kid(s)? Not whatsoever. I know the exact dates they were both conceived.

You don’t need to answer those questions here. Just answer them to yourself.

LOL, I already did. I want you to see them, because then you can adjust anything in your analali
s, before I tell you if you are correct, or not…

“I’m saying a BAD MARRAIGE ISN’T just my fault. THERE IS A DIFFERENCE!”

Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe it is all your fault. Or maybe it is partly his fault.

You said he needed to “man up”. You said “I should have spoken to him, have him man up”. I find this very telling. What did you want him to do to “man up”? What do you mean by “man up”?

From what little you said or I can glean, “his part” is not being attractive enough or hot enough or sexy enough to hold your attention and keep you from having sex with other men. Right?

Or are you saying it’s because he wanted sex when you were tired and worn out?

Or is it because he complained about leg stubble?

Or is it because he wanted you to schedule his appointments and wash his underwear?

Or is it because he doesn’t go to the kids’ plays or listen to their kid issues (enough or in the manner you hoped for, expected or wanted)?

Or is it because you felt like a doormat (not that he treated you as one; but that your view of Christian wifely submission is “submission = doormat”)?

All these things made you not “feel” loved?

What did you want from him? Do more dishes? Listen to kid stories? Have sex at other times besides the evening? Lose weight? “Man up” (whatever that means)? Frankly, I don’t think it matters now, since you say you had a “bad marriage”. But you had a bad marriage in large part because you had sex with other men. That fact alone probably precludes your marriage from being salvaged, particularly if he knows about the adultery.

Deti: It is a combination of all of the above. What did I want from him? Perhaps just the appreciation of doing all I did… recognition? A “hey, baby, thanks, dinner was great.” or if I DID make an appointment for him, then even a simple “Thanks” instead of “OK, what time is it at?” Spend more time with the kids, (my 18 year old even says, Daddy doesn’t really spend much time with us.”) Man up: that would be in direct reflection that any job he’s ever had, he shows me the job he wants, and I make up the resume, cover letter, and even respond to email correspondences in regards to that job…

Last night he basically asked me to give us another chance (he knows of the currant man online, and two of the affairs!!! I would have left me already, actually!) So, here is why it still matters…
If I stay, I don’t know if I’ll be faithful. Knowing my track record???

If I leave, I feel maybe I should stay single.

If I marry this other man, will old patterns repeat themselves, or can I learn to communicate better.

AND, what if I DO find the new guy sexually attractive” but then lose interest later, how/what can I do to get the attraction back???

OK. Eight affairs total. One is emotional only and has been going on more than a year. You probably reconnected with him through social media.

Is this emotional affair still going on? If it is, why? If you want to salvage your marriage, don’t you think it might be a good idea to cut off contact with this man? And since you’ve “discussed marriage” with this other man (your ex boyfriend), do you really want to stay with your husband? I mean, you should stay with him and try to make it work for your children, but if won’t work if you’re still emotionally tied to an ex boyfriend with whom you’re continuing contact.

This is a biggie: Does your husband know about all of these affairs? Does he know the extent of your cheating? Does he know who these men are? If he knows, how did he find out? If he doesn’t know about them, you should tell him. About all of them. Be honest.

You have had seven physical affairs. The kissing and petting take it to physical even if there wasn’t intercourse.

The problem here is really quite basic.

1. You do not respect your husband. At all. There are a lot of reasons for it. The biggest one is you’re the breadwinner; you earn double what he earns; and he works two jobs. You resent him for this. Immensely. The remaining reasons are (a) you think he’s an overgrown kid (computer use, you clean up after him, apply for his jobs, schedule appointments, etc.) and (b) he ignores you and the kids (so you say).

2. You have a Churchian, skewed idea of what biblical respect and submission is. You believe your husband has to earn your respect. From a biblical standpoint, he doesn’t. He’s entitled to that respect because he’s your husband, and you agreed to marry him, and God put him in that position over you (yes, OVER you). He doesn’t have to earn your respect. And it’s not based on how “loved” you feel. Also, submission does not mean simpering, cowering doormat to a dictatorial tyrant. It only means he directs the course of your marriage and relationship; and you follow his lead. It sounds like he’s not leading or has no vision for your marriage and relationship. Or, he has a mission and a vision, but you don’t like it or don’t agree with it or aren’t on board with it.

A few other things you should consider.

Has your husband always been like this? Or has there been a change? If so, when did it happen? Why did it happen? What else was going on around that time? If he’s always been like this, why did you marry him?

Were there periods of time when you weren’t having sex for whatever reason?

You’re not going to want to hear this, but I’m going to say it. It’s pretty well accepted around these parts, we call it the “manosphere” or the “androsphere”, that if a wife cheats on a husband (especially to the extent that you have), the marriage is pretty well over. The reason is rooted in the different reasons men and women cheat. When a man cheats it is almost always just for sexual variety. It has nothing to do with him trying to find another wife. He is having fun sex, variety sex, recreational sex.

But when a woman cheats, the reasons are entirely different. Almost all the time, when a wife cheats on her husband, she has already decided she’s pretty much done with the marriage. By the time she’s crossed the sexual Rubicon with another man, she’s long ago checked out of the marriage emotionally. She no longer sees the husband as a husband, as a sexual man or sexual partner or lover. She just sees him as a friend, or roommate, or dad to her kids. When she starts seeking – and getting — emotional or physical attachments to other men, she’s essentially looking for a replacement husband. (Keep in mind – it is much, much easier for a woman to cheat than it is for a man; simply because men are more sexually available to women than women are sexually available to men.) That’s the real danger here. Candidly, you might already have done too much damage to yourself and the marriage to save it, mostly because you simply might be unable ever again to see your husband as a lover or sex partner, regardless of what changes or how much he “mans up”. Your lovers past and present will always loom over your marriage, mostly because you allowed them to intervene in it. Were I your husband, I’d forgive you and then divorce you, for the reasons above. That bond has been almost irretrievably severed by your conduct, and candidly, the chances of it being reconnected are infinitesimal at best.

Another last thing here – we haven’t heard your husband’s side of it, and we probably won’t unless he writes in here. No disrespect intended, but I am sure he has complaints about you, and I don’t trust you to provide an accurate account of his complaints about you. Any account you give will be skewed to paint you in as positive a light as possible. You should consider honestly and as objectively as you can, what his complaints about you are.

You don’t really know what you want. You need to decide that first. You’re still seriously considering leaving, and marrying your ex BF. You haven’t even cut ties with ex BF. You’re still engaged in an emotional affair.

Do you want to save your marriage, or do you want to pursue something with ex BF? Decide that FIRST. Candidly, I suspect part of you enjoys the drama this is creating. You have two men, one you’re married to and the other you have strong feelings for, vying for your attention and affections. Down deep, I am sure you are relishing this with everything in your being.

By the way, is your current emotional affair with the man who “touched you” years ago and you broke up, or is this a different man?

Your husband’s actions reinforce your lack of respect for him. You talk of him coming to you and asking “you to give us another chance”. You even admit that if you were in his shoes, divorce would already have happened. Your husband is pathetic. I frankly understand why you have no respect for him. It doesn’t excuse or justify your cheating; but it does explain your cheating.

I strongly recommend that you get counseling. Like, right now. RIGHT NOW. Make NO decisions until you have some counseling. Your husband should get separate counseling. I wouldn’t recommend marriage counseling in which both of you attend together at this point.

I want to believe that this attitude of being swept in wherever direction the emotional winds blow is isolated and rare, but it clearly isn’t. We keep hearing the same thing again and again. I guess self-control just isn’t part of the modern mindset.

“I want to believe that this attitude of being swept in wherever direction the emotional winds blow is isolated and rare, but it clearly isn’t. We keep hearing the same thing again and again.”

It does seem to be ubiquitous, doesn’t it? This is a clear case of making decisions based on feelings. I know two women in similar situations to Traci: married to men they don’t respect and having extramarital affairs. It’s really something. The prime reasons are the encouragement from the culture, and the insulation from consequences. No matter what decision Traci makes, she will be endlessly affirmed and validated for it; and society, the church and the courts will minimize any consequences to her.

Hey Traci – as a man who does most all those things for himself which you did for your husband, I understand what chores they are. I am ‘with’ a woman who does all of these chores as well, since we are both single parents… and I recognize how much effort these chores are. When they are shared, life and probably marriage, is much easier,.

Deti: You might consider Spanking your wife more often. Women like that kinda thing right on their rear end. With a little practice you’ll get the hang of it and can hit hard without injury. The medium hard, to hard smacking booty shaking impact is what’s it’s all about. Trust me on this – YOU will enjoy it… and dammit, so will she!

DETI: Society, yes will minimize, I agree. And yes, our culture encourages, unfortunately, this is true. I will have church consequences, though. Pretty strong ones, actually. Especially since I’m a “public figure.” Dire, drastic consequences. And they will be deserved.

“By the way, is your current emotional affair with the man who “touched you” years ago and you broke up, or is this a different man?”

Answer: no, different boyfriend. Actually, the only boyfriend who STILL remained my boyfriend when I said I didn’t want to have sex until I was married (I know, I know what you are thinking, you DON’T need to post it!

You think that I would make light, to make myself look better in your eyes? Are you SERIOUS????? Think about it. Ya’ll don’t know me. I have nothing to gain by making myself look better. I’m TRYING to figure myself out, for crying out loud. I have plenty of faults.

I think he’d find faults with:
Yes, I don’t want sex with him, so have rejected him.
I am not affectionate to him, something he really needs (his personality)
He probably thinks I nag.
I HAVE disrespected him (you know, the complaining about him to my girlfriends, complaining about him under my breath, but so that he can hear.)
I’m sure he sees me as wishy-washy, as I tend to be sentimental, big ups, big downs.
Lately, especially, my idea of “cooking” is opening a box of mac-n-cheese, he prefers more “home-cooked”
I’m sure there are more issues he would have with me, but I know those would bother ME.

“I strongly recommend that you get counseling. Like, right now. RIGHT NOW. Make NO decisions until you have some counseling. Your husband should get separate counseling. I wouldn’t recommend marriage counseling in which both of you attend together at this point”

Yes, I was seriously considering that. Again, no excuse, because I’m not (no matter what ya’ll may think) I’m NOT trying make excuses… what I haven’t mentioned is that I was sexually abused as a child. All growing up, I seriously hardly thought about it, and never thought I held resentment nor anything, but it makes me wonder if it’s shaped my ideas/beliefs about sex. But so, yes, I just came to a point where I thought, “OK, T, this is soooo not normal, unhappy or not. You need to reach out somewhere.” Sometimes it’s easier to look to complete strangers… Deti, thank you for your frankness, and sincerity. I really appreciate it.

As far as relishing it? You may think so, but if you knew how much I’ve cried the last few days over this, you’d question your thoughts. I’m not relishing it. I seriously think I’m sick. Morally, ethically. And yes, I believe counseling would be beneficial.

“Don’t even write another entry here. Step away from the computer, pick up the phone, find a counselor, and make an appointment as soon as possible.”

Too late. But this is the last… I’ve got things to do (and NO not MEN to do!)

I think you’re a bad person. Anyone who would do something like this to their husband/wife and mother/father of their children is a bad person. Totally untrustworthy. And should be socially disrespected. I feel sorry for your husband. He is not the problem. You are. More importantly your sense of entitlement and dissatisfaction has a result of said sense of entitlement.

You’re playing Russian Roulette with his life. Up to and possibly including murder. Yes. It’s that serious. HIV/AID is an incurable ultimately fatal disease. HPV leads to cancer which can be fatal. Herpes in incurable with life shortening long term risks. None of this speaks the the thought being infected with a curable STD let alone incurable.

Are your partners clean? Of course you will say yes. You have “women’s intuition”. Right? But in fact you only know what your adulterous partners tell you. A man who has sex with a married women is very trustworthy man indeed.

Bottom line : You don’t know who they have been with. The local HIV positive bar skank? The 40 year old MILF with herpes? The one night stand with HPV? You are potentially transferring all this risk to your Husband. This is saying nothing of the effect of divorce, your children, everything. else.

Can any man reading this possibly imagine being married to a women for 21 years who has cheated on you 5 times? Admissions like these make realize the advantages of being single.
As well as certain Islamic laws.

Oh no, another I’ll behaved whore was sexually abused as a child…. the hamster is the hamster is the hamster and writes the same story over and over again. It’s like women share one share one giant hamster instead of having their own.

“And no, NOOOO, my happiness ISN”T the most important thing in the world, but to imply that my happiness doesn’t matter at all diminishes me as a woman, as a PERSON.”

So, how important is your happiness?
Your daughters will have to live in a broken family now, and they’ll grow dysfunctionally.
Your husband’s life is basically over.
Is your happiness more important than the well being of your daughters?
Is your happiness more important than your husband’s life?

You do realize that you destroyed the life of three other people because of your actions… because you have to be happy… Three other people that are your family. The three most important people in the world to you.

This is what your actions tells. That your happiness is much more important than your husband’s life and daughter’s well being.
You sacrificed them to be happy for few nights of sex.

So, yes.
No matter what you say, your happiness is the most important thing in whole world to you.

Gentlemen, Gentlemen….PLEASE reread Traci….21 years of marriage to a guy she doesn’t really like or respect, 2 kids…. 7 affairs ( and lets review chick sex math, whatever she admits to multiply by 3….real number 21). If this isn’t the best advice column a guy can have to avoid marriage, what is?
Thank you Traci, you really are a source of comfort to a multitude of men!

For the record, I think her behavior is reprehensible and evil. Her excuse making makes her look even worse. But 4 years into a marriage is a pretty quick down slide when she got married at 19. It’s not as if she was a 30-something bride who rushed into marriage to silence her deafening biological clock.

I’m genuinely curious what she isn’t saying, which unsettles me given how much she has said.

I would like to know why Traci got married in the first place. Why can’t women like Traci be honest with themselves? If they are inclined to be like Samantha on Sex in the City why not just live as the slut you really are? Why get married and ruin other peoples lives?

It doesn’t. I raised my niece after she ran away from home for that exact reason and she was nothing of the sort. I think it has to do with how they are raised and the moral code they are taught to follow more than anything else. It does cause problems in how they see themselves and their ability to trust others, but they can overcome that, and a great many do.

Sometimes it almost feels like they pull this card as a free pass.

In the Book Of Oprah you are absolved of all blame if you have been mistreated as a child. It essentially is a free pass in the modern world.

@Michael:
“Why does being sexually abused as a child lead to promiscuity?”
Here’s my theory FWIW:
You’re either a virgin or you’re not.
You’re pure or you’re not.
You’re modest or you’re not.
You’re innocent or you’re not.

Fairness has nothing to do with the truth of the matter.

A child that has been sexually abused is no longer virginal, pure, modest or innocent.

Because only the marriage bed is undefiled – this leads the child to be filled with shame.

The child is not guilty but nonetheless they are shamed.
This shame is the right response – it is the only true response.

In the truest sense, this child is no longer fit for marriage. Whether the child is aware of this on a cognitive level or not matters little. In biblical times, a defiled woman would be pulled out of society because they can no longer offer their future husband their innocence.

All of this is factual. The following is my opinion:

Society won’t allow the child to accept the shame that they wear, so many children will go on to use their own free will to do shameful acts that transfer the appropriate guilt to themselves that accompanies the shame they already feel.

Later, when they are faced with the truth that as a slut they don’t deserve a husband, they can accept that truth a little easier.
Condemnation from vile actions of your own free-will is easier to stomach than that from vile actions of another’s free will imposed on you.

I was sexually abused as a 12 year old by a 14 year old homeschooling family friend. As an adult, I learnt that he had been sexually abused by his uncle. It made sense that he sought to normalise his horror. But it doesn’t change the facts.

I did not deserve a husband. Knowing all this truth, I met a man that willingly risked big by making me his wife. For this I praise God and am eternally grateful to my wonderful man.

@ Michael:
“Why is it that some people who are abused pass on that abuse to other people; while other people who were abused vow never to pass on that abuse?”

I believe this is because some people refuse to face facts.
Some people act instead of think, some people will think about their actions.
It takes tremendous courage and brutal self-examination to face the ugly truth.

There was a traumatic case here in N.Z that caused me much grief:http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/6502905/Turangi-child-rapists-mum-admits-failure
The 5 year old girl that was brutally raped is now back home in Europe… she will recover from the physical harm she suffered. It’s my opinion that if she were to suppress this memory and forget it completely, I would never wish for her to visit a psychologist that would bring back the knowledge of what happened to her.
Chris in N.Z, you’re a psychiatrist right? Are you aware of this case, and what would your thoughts on her future be?

After much consideration on this over the years, I have come to the conclusion that the body can get over any trauma it lives through.
It is not the physical violence of sexual assault that damages a person for life.
It is the loss of modesty that destroys the innocence.

Michael I almost never believe any woman’s claim to sexual abuse. Heard it way to many times to buy into it. I’m fair certain 99% of the woman making the claim are liars, but I also know women almost always believe their own lies.

You can feel the difference in tone between Hannah and traci. Which one is stating facts and which one is crawfishing out of responsibility

it is very sad that most of the women today are the biggest cheaters as well as the biggest losers, since they have a need to be with so many different men at one time. most women nowadays just can’t commit to just one man anymore like they did years ago, and they are certainly the reason why the divorce rate is very much out of control nowadays.

Also she settled for a man, while on the pill!!! Once she went off the pill, she became alot more aggressive sexually

This is one of the tragedies of the pill, when they come off the pill, to have a baby, they crave alpha thugs & alpha gina tingle … (rmaxGenactivePUA)

But, but… the Pill acts as a remedy to “hypergamy”, at least while they’re taking it; there are quite a few studies now on how it affects women’s mate choices, and that’s pretty much the bottom line. It overcomes “the larger problems of hypergamy”.

So maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all if it’s breeding the hypergamous ones out of the population, by them not breeding as much, since that’s the direct primary effect.

This is absolutely right on the money! It describes my sister’s situation exactly—her hubby has been relegated to the basement, she’s been too chicken for the last 18 months to actually take the last step. I’ve been thinking she’s mentally disturbed. Clearly, she is, but she isn’t alone.

Someone sent me this and I verified that it exists. It’s a comment on a very popular blog. Exactly what you’ve written about for years. Is ‘Confused about belief in Christ’ on divorce documents these days?dawn43229: ya know, i wondered if i was doing a bad thing by filing for a divorce, but with my step daughter going into wicca and now is bi sexual, i am glad i followed what my heart said. i did not want my son raised with someone confused about his belief in Christ

Mr. Deti: Thank you for your wisdom & blunt honesty. As a single Christian woman, it was very helpful as to how some men think. You certainly don’t hear what you’ve said in today’s church. There were other helpful comments here but yours stood out. Thank you for the post Mr. Dalrock.

I’ve heard rumors of stuff like this before, mostly jokes about how women are divorcing left and right but really I thought that’s all they were. Just rumors and jokes. But it seems as if this is more like an epidemic and it is truly horrible. How can women justify their reasons for wrecking a family and their children’s futures with a decent, faithful, stable man simply because they’re bored? I can’t even begin to understand what is going through these women’s minds. It’s a truly sad, sad, thing.

I have been married 3 times faithful and loving always willing to do housework and how have I been paid back? MY 1ST CHEATED MY 2ND WAS A CONTROL FREAK AND I TOOK CARE OF HER UNTIL SHE DIED FROM CANCER AND MY 3RD IS NOT HAPPY AND DOES NOT KNOW WHAT SHE WANTS! BOUGHT HER A HOUSE BUT NOT ENOUGH! NO MORE MARRIAGE BUT I HOPE GOD FORGIVES ME BECAUSE I PLAN ON MAKING UP FOR LOST TIME BEING SINGLE!

I find this article a little mysoginystic, in that you seem to be saying that any woman who asks for a divorce is ultimately trying to profit from it, or trying to wreck sometimes life. I’m sorry, but we do live in a society that will make a woman feel bad for leaving a man without having a “good reason”. I saw my own mother go through it, she wasn’t happy with my step dad and to many people that wasn’t good enough and it wasn’t fair to my step dad. So honestly most of what you’re saying is making me so uncomfortable.

Devlin, in his book “Sexual Utopia” (which Dalrock mentioned a few days ago) makes an interesting point that pertains to this.

Women initiate about 70% of divorces, but there is also a significant percentage of wives that (1) want to get divorced, but (2) don’t want to be the one to initiate the divorce (because they don’t want to be seen as the bad guy). So, they make their husband’s life miserable in an attempt to manipulate their husbands to initiate the divorce.

So, of the 30% of divorces initiated by men some percentage (let’s pick a number out of the air for discussion’s sake–one third) are only “initiated” by the husband, because the wife manipulated him into it. Thus, the REAL number of wife manipulated divorces is closer to 80%.

We need some jargon to describe this. A shorthand phrase to describe where a husband initiated a divorce, not because he wanted to, but because the wife manipulated him into it.

I’m genuinely shocked. My (now ex) husband cheated and impregnated another woman fourteen years and three children into our marriage. It devastated me. All of those years devoting myself to God, my husband, my children, and my home, only to have it ripped away in the most brutal possible way. He followed up with a bankruptcy filing, this paragon of Christianity walking away from every feasible responsibility. I now work a menial job thanks to all those years as a stay-at-home mom, my children are understandably struggling even four years later, and I can’t imagine another man being interested in me, ever. No matter how attractive a woman is, who would want this type of baggage? Enough time spent in the manosphere will assure you today’s man does not.

Please , just notice that in the Bible there is no such thing as an adulterous husband . The Bible always focuses on adutlerous WIVES .
The biblical defintion of adultery for a man is that of a man taking his neighbour’s wife or marrying a divorced woman , not that of a man ” cheating” on his wife as the pagan world and the church repeat like parrots.
It is not the true definition of adultery.

Notice that in the OT you have a whole passage about a man suspecting his wife to be adulterous and a religious rite commanded by the Lord to deal with the case .
But you never never find the reverse .
Please read it again and again and you will see how feminized and corrupt to the core our Western world is.

If what people say was true , Elkana who had two wives would have been called adulterous by the Lord himself. What about David or Solomon ?
David was called adulterous only when he slept with Uri’s wife .

The truth is , a man can handle two wives at the same time but a woman can just have one man.
This is why the true destroyer of the marriage link is NOT the man but the woman.
The woman in her corrupt mind , is a serious monogamist ready to ruin several marriages.
The man is a polygamist (not all men of course) ready to make ONE marriage stable .

I’m not advocating polygamy since God does not. But God does not condemn it either.
Because polygamy is a steady form of marriage : man at the top , father of all children.

Nothing is more destructive and poisonous than female sexual promiscuity.

Last point , notice also that no provision is given to women in the Bible for divorce.
Divorce is in the hands of MAN , the head of the covenant.

The OT is not exactly a ringing endorsement of polygamy. It is a historical record of a time in which it was not uncommon, and it clearly documented all the strife and discord it caused, even if the Lord allowed it, perhaps due to the hardness of men’s hearts.

It created division among the children, between the women, and in the loyalties of the father.

In your two examples alone one of King David’s sons, Amnon, raped his brother’s sister (possibly half sister,) another son, Absolom in revenge murdered him, fled with foreign support, and then returned and incited a rebellion and by today’s definition possibly raped David’s concubines. Upon David’s death his sons and queens vied among the government functionaries to rule, ultimately with King Solomon succeeding and sending an executioner/assasin to kill David’s son Adonijah.

And also the drama with Elkana. It was clear the two women in his life were broken hearted and constantly competing with each other. Read 1 Samuel 1 where Hannah was filled with deep anguish and Peninnah would mock Hannah for her barrenness despite or maybe because Elkana favored Hannah. I can imagine the bitter joy when Hannah gave up her only son to Eli just after he was finished weaning.

It is clear to those who have eyes to see when Jesus said Matthew 19:4 ” “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,”. ἄρσεν (male) καὶ (and) θῆλυ (female) are both singular, not plural.

My wife is an example of your article. She cheated on me since she started creating an interest and feeling on her ex in start of Jan 2012 thinking that I am unaware of it. I trusted her before she invited her ex to spend the night with her. She did not realise that I would find out. My wife is a narcissist. My son asked me to kiss my wife but was unable to do so as my wife has pushed me away from her. She is not attractive at all and abusive towards me when talking to her friends, that is when she gets her sting out, then, applied her destructive power to harm me.My son is growing in a wrong family environment as she cannot see love between my wife and myself, we do not kiss, no touching, not sleeping together, my wife masturbates and cheats to get her happiness and cries her eyes by feeling unhappy to live with me. This is her creation and never takes the blame or responsibility of her doings. She likes to get support in what she does to me. She lives in her soul most of her time and likes harming and hurting me.I feel sorry as my son cannot see and experience a loving family and how couples love each other. My wife took our happiness away for her own narcissist, emotional, psychological problem.

I have only recently realized that this activity was yet another manipulative attempt by my now ex wife. She was despicable rude to me all the time. She rolled her eyes and snapped if I even spoke to her. When I began to withdraw she told everyone I was lousy in bed and just dull and boring. She kept this up incessantly- all the while telling people she thought I was having an affair…
…SHE was the one having the affair!! Her old lover from years past had come into her life. He was married himself and evidently she had to wait for him to leave his wife. Four years it took and when he left his wife- mine left me for him- giving me every cockamayme excuse in the book as to why she had to leave me. I had never cheated on her and it drove her crazy that she hadn’t been able to drive me to cheat and give her a good excuse to dump me for the loser she loved.
He is a loser. Turns out he’s on his third bankruptcy since 2003 and owes the IRS over $30,000.00. I just found out he cheated on her last month. She had to forgive him since he’s all she’s got now…
…and an hour ago I saw him with his other girlfriend in his truck while my ex is at a funeral. Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it…